


Dirty Dogs

by ur_the_puppy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Clexa Week 2020, Day 2, F/F, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Survival, Vampire!Lexa, Vampires, Werewolves, basically its a supernatural underground cagefight au, non-explicit smut in later chapters, try saying THAT ten times fast, werewolf!clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:34:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 139,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22987174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ur_the_puppy/pseuds/ur_the_puppy
Summary: Clarke has done a lot of stupid things in her life, and yet there really is nothing that quite takes the cake like getting kidnapped and then waking in a cage. In what is probably a basement. And the only company she has is some stoic vampire sitting next to her. And it's all onlykindaher own fault.ora supernatural underground cagefight au.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin & Lexa, Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 260
Kudos: 1283
Collections: Best Of Women In Love, Clexaweek2020





	1. of all that i have lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have written a lot of self indulgent shit before, but this really tops it. i dont have much of an excuse for this bar that i just fucking LOVE over the top fight scenes and werewolves so here we are.  
> also, its only me that goes over this so all mistakes are proudly mine. if typos are something that drive you insane, kindly point them out and ill fix them for you.
> 
> hope you enjoy and happy clexa week lads!

_Once I saw him in the moonlight_

_When the bats were flying_

_All alone I saw the werewolf_

_And the werewolf was crying._

_-[Werewolf by Michael Hurley (1971)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwgCYwCgaI)_

It’s over before it’s even begun.

Not that she lets it happen easy, because if there’s one thing Clarke has never done it’s go down quietly. They time it well, she’ll give them that. They wait until it’s just barely into morning, where the sun’s only just breached over horizon and stretches out slow like waking up. The stars run on back home and the moon, full to the brim, gets forgotten as the rest of the world catches on.

Clarke is forgotten too. As the dawn light comes, she stands up slow and hazy like every other creature in the woods with her, cracks her neck with a quiet groan. She rolls her shoulders, lets the last of the shift roll through as her spine pulls up like a zipper.

There’s next to nothing to really fear out here. She is always moving, anyway, never does well is staying one place long enough for any to even get her name right. Her family calls her a lost soul that wouldn’t know home if it bit her in the ass, but they don’t know that she carries home with her. It sits in the back of her car in tubes of acrylic and stalks of graphite and sketchbooks with pages she’s always filling up quicker than a paycheck would prefer.

When it gets particularly bad, she doesn’t bother with buying any food at all. Only waits until the sun is a little lower and slinks off to the woods deep as it allows. Then, well, it’s only a matter of making sure there’s no one near, before she’s slipping off her clothes into a neat stack and melting into the forest that swallows her with a smile.

Even on four legs, though, she refuses to give in to the temptation of sneaking off into the farm she knows she could. Doesn’t matter how the thought of a real, honest calf after having barely anything for days makes her entire monstrous mouth water. Word will be out like wild fire in the morning, for a hunt of a description she’d bear an odd liking to if you caught her at the right time, and then she’ll be skipping town as fast as her beaten own car can take her and she has to start over all over again.

They seem to know this. Know she’s slower in the mornings after a full moon, has finally got some proper meal in her after hunting all night, is relaxed and maybe still a little moon drunk if its recent enough. She has only just pulled her shirt back over, threaded her belt through her jeans when she takes a second too long to notice the absence of sound.

Clarke stills. Slowly lowers her hands away from her belt. Carefully, she turns around, sniffs the air and tries to tilt her head in multiple ways to find any of the sounds of nature that _should_ be there.

It’s then the first shot goes off.

Something sharp pinches her neck, and before Clarke can even peel her lip back at least three armed men come bursting out and it’s already over before it has even begun. Another shot hits, her arm this time, but when she falls to her knees and she holds her arm expecting blood there’s—nothing.

She stares, as her vision starts to go blurry.

Tranquiliser dart.

The soldiers cautiously approach then, lowering their weapons as its clear she’s about to go under. They don’t need to know that when she collapses into the dirt ground it is entirely of her own choice. The first one that comes up kneels next to her, checks her pulse.

She snaps her teeth over his wrist.

The solider hisses out a curse, yells out for his comrades to fucking _help him_ , but she bites down _harder_ and then rips her head back. Someone snaps their elbow around her neck from behind, roughly jerks her back as she thrashes blindly even as it’s getting harder to even keep her eyes open.

She watches as the solider from before is still screaming. Another drops beside him and frantically covers the man’s wrist from where it’s bleeding out profusely. She’d gotten a main artery, as she expected. Some things werewolves just have to know.

“Oh, come on,” she pants out, grinning with bloody teeth like the devil. “It’s just a scratch, isn’t it big boy?”

Her laughter is choked out of her from the arm still locked around her throat, but it’s worth it to see the utter _murder_ in their eyes, staring at her from across the clearing with their hand gripped so tightly around the gun at their hip the fingers are white. The sight doesn’t last long till her eyes finally force shut and no amount of will can stop her from blacking out.

Her last thought is: at least they’d waited until she had put clothes on.

Would have been just plain rude otherwise, wouldn’t it?

-

It takes her just opening her eyes to know she’s fucked.

Not in the good way, either.

Her head’s pounding behind her eyes and the second she’s conscious, she immediately hisses through her teeth, jerking her hand up to fend off something’s that not even there. The ground under her is cold and hard. The air smells dry and like blood and death, which isn’t exactly a _great_ sign, and as she finally blinks her eyes open, she finds she’s lying flat on her back, staring up at a dark ceiling.

There are bars running across her vision too.

“Be too much to hope to suppose I’m dreaming,” she says to herself, if only just to hear something that isn’t the terrifying silence of wherever the hell she is. At least her voice she knows.

“You’re not.”

Like reflex, like is nature for someone who’s always looking over her shoulder, waiting for mobs with pitchforks at her door any second, Clarke has already jolted to feet and is snarling out her throat, _ready_ to tear into the first thing foolish enough to get her in sight.

But she is shutting up a second later at finding the owner of the voice.

It’s a _vampire_ , which explains why she didn’t immediately clock them. There’s no heartbeat to pick out, no steady in and out pull of the air, and while she _had_ caught the scent of death before she’d figured, well, what else would you except to find after waking up in a stranger’s basement?

The vampire is sitting in a cage next to her. And that’s only when it hits Clarke too, that right now, she’s standing in a _cage_ , there’s metal all wrapped around her like jaws seconds from closing in. The only source of light in the dark and dank dungeon she’s somehow found herself in is some lone shitty light swinging slowly from the ceiling, looking like it’d fit seamlessly in a horror movie set.

Things just keep getting better and better.

“Who are you?” she snaps, stares at the vampire who is calmly sitting cross-legged across the metal from her. Her eyes are closed, hands resting atop her knees, long, brunette hair streaming down her back with only a few messy braids thrown in. There is not a single twitch of movement from her, not anything. Put her in a museum and you’d probably nod appreciatively and point it out, say see that jaw, see how sharp those bones are, that can’t _possibly_ be carved, can it?

Then the statue’s mouth moves. Which is startling for anybody, human or no.

“I’m not what you should be afraid of,” the vampire says, eyes still perfectly closed.

That makes her freeze. Glancing around the room, the cold and tight and decidedly _bad fucking vibes_ room, Clarke reconsiders her question.

“Where am I?”

The corner of the vampire’s mouth twitches, before the features fall blank once more. Her entire expression is like the cold stone around them. It’s not making Clarke feel any better.

“Underground,” the vampire says. “Don’t start screaming, please. No one will come and my hearing is very sensitive.”

“I just woke up in a fucking cage, I’ll scream if I goddamn want to.”

The vampire sighs. It’s a weird thing to see, on a creature that doesn’t breathe.

Clarke decides to ignore whoever the hell she has sat next to her and focuses on the prison around her. Cautiously, she dares to reach a hand out to brush against the bars, but when her finger grazes the metal she doesn’t instantly flinch back, doesn’t stick her finger in her mouth and suck and spit out any remnants left on it.

It’s not silver.

A scan of the rest it shows that the metal is thick, but it’s just that: metal. Metal can be torn. Ripped. If you’ve got something sharp enough, _strong_ enough, and Clarke’s got all that in spades just with her teeth alone. There’s a reason werewolves haven’t been found out in all this time and it’s not because of friendly conversation.

Just as she tenses—the blue in her eyes clouding into something else, hands spreading out in the telltale warning sign to shift—the vampire’s oddly soft voice speaks up again.

“Don’t waste your time. The metal has magic in it. They tortured a witch into doing it.”

“Shut up,” she spits back, so she doesn’t have to think about the weight of what she just said, of taking in that apparently these people _torture_ others and they’re the ones who the hold the key to her freedom. Denial’s always been a trustworthy friend, anyway.

It doesn’t take long to realise the vampire was right. It might be metal, it might be weak to be torn and bent and ripped, but all bets are off the second you involve _magic_ into something.

Magic is ruled to take into account someone like her. Like werewolves and vampires and anything else that might give motivation to want to keep the monsters safely _in_ the dark and not buried in your throat.

She’s panting by the end of it, her bare feet and hands aching even worse at being repeatedly slammed into metal that won’t give. Her throat’s rubbed raw, too, but despite the vampire’s comment, when she screams out in that terrified frustration, the vampire doesn’t say anything.

Vampires probably know a lot about grief, anyway. Because that’s what the screaming is for really. She’s not grieving a person but a _life_ , what she had, even if it wasn’t much. She’s grieving over a car that’s barely surviving but sentimentality keeps her running her hands gently over its wheel and the sound of pencils scratching against paper and how grass feels spreading under bare feet and then barely like a whisper under paws as she just about outruns the wind.

She collapses into the back of the cage. Nothing feels real. Somehow, her legs don’t give out just yet under the weight of what’s happened. Clarke forces in and out a breath that trembles the whole way. Blinks away whatever’s in her eyes and finally works her mouth.

“Am I going to die?” she whispers.

“That depends,” the vampire murmurs, still sitting as regally as one can on the dirtied floor inside a cage. “Are you any good in a fight?”

Clarke slowly slides down until her knees are up to her chest. The vampire, for the first time since, her eyes actually open, and she glances over to her. At Clarke’s lack of response for a second she swears she sees the first flash of emotion over the vampire’s stony face.

Disappointment.

“You won’t have to worry for long, then,” the vampire finally says, her voice softer now, almost apologetic. She shrugs. “They prefer when it’s someone new for the fights. Lets the money keep guessing.”

For some reason, the first thought that breaks through the overwhelmed stunned horror, is that she’s never seen the ocean. Somehow she has always seemed to miss it, even considering how at this point she’s almost gone across the country and back again. It had always been something she’d told herself one day. _One day_ she’ll get round to it. Just jump into her almost-dead car and force the thing to cough out its last miles somewhere to the nearest beach, no matter how far that is.

She’ll smell the salt in the air, even taste it it’ll be so close.

It will be perfect.

Or it would have been anyway.

-

It’s hours and hours later until she sees the soldiers again.

Though she knows better now, knows these definitely aren’t that. It might have been her initial assumption when she’d seen the geared up men in black fatigues closing in on her, but not anymore. Werewolves tend to be born with a ticking clock figure over their heads and she’d just figured, well, this is how it always goes, isn’t it? The wrong person caught word of her and now she’s destined to be some military lab experiment that’ll have her mother shaking her head in all kinds of ways to herself.

Clarke doesn’t know if this is better. For one, this feels all sorts of illegal, and if the government _had_ sniffed out her kind, she’s got no doubt there’d be some ungodly amount of funding pumped in for super soldiers and every other cliché, not bare bones facilities like this. How else is a werewolf meant to live their life, really.

But she knows these aren’t soldiers. The vampire next to her has remained persistently silent despite Clarke’s many questions, but it doesn’t take a genius, what with the kidnapping, waking up in a cage, and the vampire’s first earlier comments of fighting and _money_ to put two and two together.

It almost makes her want to smile, that doomsday sort of one. Her mother’s always been muttering about she was going to get herself killed one day if she didn’t get her act together, didn’t take things _seriously_ like she should have. Well, you were right, Clarke says just for herself. Didn’t ever think it’d end like this though, did you, mom?

A small, electronic beep is all she has as an indicator for the coming hellscape. Clarke stands up, noticing in the edge of her sight how the vampire doesn’t react in the slightest, still sitting there like a statue, eyes shut and gone to the world. There’s a series of heavy _clunks_ of metal locks, and the thick door into the room jerks open.

Two men step through. One of them has a tray in their hand, and Clarke knows what they are then: guard dogs. Maybe deep in over their heads just looking for a paycheck, maybe not. Her eyes linger on them as they near, on the exposed flesh of their necks, focuses in easily on the speed of their heartbeat. The smell of their sweat.

She absentmindedly runs her tongue over her teeth, remembers how it’d felt tearing the man’s wrist out.

“Dinner time, mongrel.” One of them grins, casually flipping a baton in his hand as his eyes don’t ever stray from Clarke. The other guard slips in past him and kneels down. She stares as he puts the tray of whatever on the ground and pushes a metal hatch to the side, shoves the tray through. It scrapes along the stone floor and stops a few inches from her feet.

Clarke only raises her brow. “What, did no one tell you werewolves like something more _alive_?” She smiles at him and prowls closer, enjoying it when his hand immediately stiffens around the baton. “How is your friend doing, by the way? Made it all in one piece, didn’t he?”

“Shut it,” the guard spits, and Clarke’s smile goes wider, till her canines are showing and she raises her hands up in false peace.

“Only asking, sir. No need to get so twitchy. After all, werewolves got _nasty_ bites, don’t they? You made sure to count all his hairs, count all his teeth? Wave some meat in his nose, I wouldn’t mind a roommate…”

The baton lights up with electricity. “ _One_ more fucking word out of you.” He storms forward, thick and furious veins pulsing out his neck. Clarke laughs and steps back, keeping her hands up like easy now, easy. He glares at her through bared teeth like he’s seconds from going at her throat.

The other guard with him grabs his arm. They share a look, as the guard shakes his head slow, and this time when he looks back at Clarke it’s with him stepping away and forcing a laugh. “You’re funny,” he says, pointing the baton at her without a hint of a smile on his mouth.

Clarke stares at him, all amusement gone. While she hopes he comes close enough for her to try something, it’s doubtful now. His attention shifts off her as he fully steps back. She fantasises about the soft flesh of his neck tearing under her teeth, so much so that her iris melts into yellow, claws pushing out of her middle knuckles. Her mouth swelling with new teeth. The other guard watches the entire thing. His hand is gripped tight to the gun holstered at his side.

As much as it amuses her, she _is_ beyond starving. The fantasy fades, her attention drops to the tray near her feet, and as her features relax into their more human counterparts she hears the guard’s relieved breath. She has only just crouched down, picked up at the barely cooked chicken leg and eyeing it dubiously, when she hears the guard talking again.

“And what about you, Commander? Anything I can get for you?”

It’s said like a joke. The vampire ignores it entirely, eyes still closed and otherwise on a whole different realm. “Emerson,” she acknowledges in a bored murmur.

Clarke looks between them. He’d called her commander, which is already beyond weird to call someone you have locked up. Why give them a rank at all? Maybe she used to be one of them, betrayed them and now her old title of respect is spat out like acid.

Emerson edges closer to the Commander’s cage. The electricity is still sizzling along the baton, a steady crackle that sends the hairs rising up her arms. The vampire doesn’t react. Emerson lingers, clearly hoping for something, but his slimy grin falters the longer nothing happens.

Eventually he grinds his teeth. “Look at you now. All that blood on your hands, and still, as pathetic as anything.” His lip pulls back in disgust. “Bitch.”

He gives the cage a hard thwack that echoes horribly in the tight space. The vampire doesn’t flinch, but Clarke sees what she thinks Emerson doesn’t. That slight tensing in the shoulders, fingers digging into her knees instead of draped across.

It’s enough.

As Emerson backs away, he comes into her hypothetical reach for just a second. He’s still distracted with eyeing up the vampire and it’s all the chance Clarke needs to lunge forward faster than a blink and wraps her hand around the back of his neck. She rams him forward and his face smashes into the bars, but before she can do anything else the other guard—who had been watching _her_ the entire time, unlike his fellow—has already lit his baton up too and hits the metal. Clarke lurches back, hissing through her teeth at the harsh bolt that surges up her arm. Emerson stumbles back too, clutching at his face and swearing, and when his eyes snap up they’re _burning_ as blood messily spurts out his nose.

“Sorry, sorry.” Clarke backs up, not bothering at all to tamper down her savage grin. “Muscle memory, you know? That’s my bad guys, truly, from the bottom of my heart.”

Emerson wipes the blood under his nose with the back of his hand. “I’ll make you regret that, _dog_.”

He’s still seething as he spits at the floor of her cage and shoves his way out the room. The other guard scrambles to follow him.

When they’re alone again, Clarke looks to vampire and is surprised to find her with her eyes wide open, watching her. It’s only now Clarke sees that her eyes are green. A beautiful shade, too.

The vampire shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“What kind of name is Commander anyway?” Clarke asks, ignoring it completely. She kneels down again and pulls the tray of food towards her. The chicken had certainly seen better days, but werewolves aren’t picky. “Your parents really name you that? Is that what names were like way back when, just slapping titles on newborns? Don’t have a long lost cousin named Queen, do you?”

The vampire clenches her jaw, but says nothing. She looks away.

Clarke chuckles under her breath. “That was my attempt to get you to tell me your name, you know.”

“I’m aware.”

“Mine is Clarke.”

The vampire doesn’t say anything.

Clarke smiles to herself, shaking her head.

-

It takes three days, but Emerson sticks by his word.

For the next two nights he comes back by her cage to give her daily rations, he just keeps _smiling_ at her now, like he knows something she doesn’t. And, well. Really there’s no like about it. He _does_ know what she doesn’t. It’s obvious in the smug curve of his lips and the vicious glint in his eyes as he watches her.

She plays it like it’s nothing, of course. She’s never been good at keeping quiet and that trait isn’t forgotten now. Used to mean teachers always dreaded having her in classes growing up, knowing they’d be getting that blonde kid that had students hanging on to her words and rejecting any authority thrown on her.

And just like then, it’s still the same. The second the back is turned and attention is finally pulled away for easier things, her smile already wipes off like nothing was keeping it there. Her heart beats faster and her breathing _shakes_.

The vampire barely talks. Clarke watches her sometimes. She has only met a vampire once before, and that was when her dad was still alive. It was a long time ago. Still, some qualities linger no matter what, and it’s both surprising and not to see just how plain beautiful the vampire is.

That’s how vampires always are anyway. They’ve got a beauty that few beings have, that _untouchable_ kind. Superhuman, beyond what should be possible. Like if you were touch their face it’d be sacrilege. Makes sense evolution wise if your entire means of survival depends on blood from humans. Might as well make yourself as appealing as possible, so you can feed without ever having to kill.

If they weren’t in such dire circumstances, Clarke would’ve already tried every trick in the book to get her number by now.

The third night is when it finally happens.

Like the nights previous the guard dogs come in at the same time as always to hand her food out. This time, though, Emerson strides in with a smirk so wide all his teeth are gleaming, and it’s not just one other guard dog with him it’s _five_.

Clarke knows it’s bad when the vampire immediately stands up too.

“Got a _real_ special treat for you tonight, dog.” He plants himself a few metres in front of her cage, the baton lighting up. Two guards come out behind him, poles with nooses tied at the end hanging off. The others have guns primed in their hands but she’s got little hope there’s bullets in there. That’d be too easy an out.

One comes forward with a key in his hand. Her heart is beating so wildly in her chest now she catches how the vampire’s eyes snap to her, and despite how little’s been said between them and how they’re strangers and nothing less, when the cage door is wrenched open the vampire steps right up to the edge of her own. Waiting for any to come in reach.

It doesn’t take a genius to know she’s probably about to be dragged to her death.

The second her cage is open, Clarke leaps at the offered freedom like any caged animal would. Her lip peels back into a snarl and her eyes are already yellow. She lunges forward and ignores the electrified baton that’s slammed into her side as she lunges, and even though it fucking _hurts_ , they had clearly been expecting her to back off and not just take the blow.

She takes him into the ground. The guard’s eyes blow wide and there’s real, pure fear there. Arms immediately hook around a waist, another electric jolt into her back, a loop wrapping around her neck ripping her backwards.

They’re not fast enough to stop her hands.

Wet black claws are already pushing out from her middle knuckles, even with her hand wrapped around his throat, but when she’s torn back she’d been _waiting_ , digging the claws into his neck, and the flesh tears right open as she’s hauled backwards.

Her insides already burn. She’s growling and snarling blindly, less because there’s no words to scream and more because her throat’s already starting to change, her tongue’s thick and swollen in her mouth while her teeth have gotten too big they barely fit anymore.

Another violent shock stabs her stomach and she tries to stumble back from it, but the noose around her neck jerks her up on her feet. Her eyes snap to the guard’s, and even though there’s screaming going off behind her as one of the guards is desperately trying to save their comrade, Clarke keeps fighting off the inevitable anyway.

When they finally manage to wrangle her—at least three new burn marks singed through her shirt and down into her skin, bruises forming all over—a guard is dead at her feet, another bleeding out clutching at a claw marks across his stomach. But now there are two nooses around her neck, the guards pulling her both ways with gritted teeth, sweat in their brows, and she knows it’s over.

As they drag her out the door, one last time her eyes flick out to the vampire behind her. She’s pressed as close as she could get against the bars. Her eyes are the widest Clarke’s ever seen from her.

“You just need to survive,” she says, but her voice sounds like she can already picture how Clarke’s grave is going to look. “That’s all you have to do, that’s _all_.”

For the first time between them, Clarke doesn’t say anything.

She’s ripped out into a hall. Her resistance is draining her, but it’s obvious it’s wearing on her handlers too. There’s a second where she thinks she actually might overpower them, where she yanks back with such force the guard’s foot slips, the pole almost flying out his hands, but then her entire world blinds into white when pure electric _agony_ bursts from her back and a scream tears out her throat.

She crumbles to the floor, as finally her body succumbs from the onslaught and she goes unconscious.

It’s the first mercy from anything she’s felt in days.

-

She bursts awake drowning.

Water coughs out her throat, and Clarke immediately curls onto her side, heaving and sputtering the sudden onslaught out her lungs and onto the stone floor. Her face and hair is drenched, but the second she’s finally gotten the water out her lungs and the coughing has died off, arms hook around her armpits and roughly pull her up.

It takes a second to realise she’d never actually been drowning. When she blinks back into reality, seeing the dark room around her, her eyes focus on Emerson and his smug grin. There’s an empty metal bucket in his hands.

“You’re not getting out of this that easy.”

There’s a new sound now. It makes her blood run cold, because she can hear clear as day the excited chatter of a crowd. There’s ribbing and yelling and curses thrown in, and even though she’s still working to get her breath back and spitting the lingering water out her mouth, instinctually she starts struggling again.

“Not this time dog,” Emerson spits, and grabs her elbow and pins it harshly behind her back. He shoves her into the nearest wall and Clarke hisses at the unnatural angle the joint is forced into.

A new voice, clearly loudened by a microphone now rings out through the dank hall.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Whether it’s your first time or your last, I thank you all for coming here tonight. We’ve got a _real_ special treat for you all this round.”

Emerson rips her back and marches her down the hall. Two guards follow with her, guns primed in their hands and loosely trained on her. The baton is pressed against her back and even though there’s no power lightning it up now, the burns are still freshly seared into her skin and she knows the warning it is.

“We were going to wait longer, but I made the request _just_ for you,” Emerson whispers into her ear, shoving her around a new hall and unlike before, Clarke almost screeches to a halt when she sees _light_ now, shining there at the end. The swell of crowd is louder now here. Closer.

She tries to push back, but Emerson wrenches her arm behind her tighter and forces her forward.

“We’ve been saving this for weeks just for you folks. We’ve got new blood on both sides this round, and I know we’d promised a round with the Commander tonight, but _this_ , I assure you, will be even better.”

The closer they get the more she makes out just what she’s being marched to. There’s a gate at the end, thick and probably magically endued like the metal she’d just been dragged out of, but beyond that there’s an oval of something, like a _stage_. An arena.

Emerson hooks an arm around her neck just as they reach the end. He doesn’t quite choke her, but more holds her roughly place. The backs of her knees get kicked out and she drops down to them. Emerson holds onto her like iron.

“Let me give you the rules,” he hisses, as the crowd erupts into bloodthirsty cheers, the announcer goading them on more and more. “You survive a round, and you give a good show, and you’ll get your own reward. You try _anything_ on the crowd, and we’ll shoot you down. The fight is only over if you’re dead or you hear the death horn.”

The gate slowly pulls up. The grind of metal gears is harsh in her ears, but the crowd is just getting louder and _louder_.

“Between me and you though…”

Emerson laughs. Without warning he rips his arm back till it’s locked so tight around her throat it cuts off all air. He jerks to his feet in the same motion and it’s so sudden she ends up almost slipping on her bare feet.

“Between us, I’ve already set the perfect space in my living room to hang up your hide when this is over. Now, sure, you can sell a werewolf pelt for thousands, even _millions_ , but I think I’d much prefer the reminder.”

“You love me that much, do you?” Clarke chokes out, and Emerson snarls in her ear as the gate finally finishes opening. With what must be great reluctance, he loosens his grip enough so she can gasp in a strangled breath.

“Are you ready!” the commentator yells, and like a wave the crowd swells with the promised violence.

“You won’t be running your mouth for fucking long,” Emerson seethes, and shoves her forward.

Clarke staggers and hits the ground. It’s _sand_ , which is already weird, but by the time she has immediately scrambled back to her feet and lunging back for him the gate has already slammed back down. Emerson calmly steps back, grinning wide while she rams the gate with her shoulder and bares her teeth with a snarl.

She doesn’t expect it to hear an equally monstrous screech behind her.

Clarke spins around instantly. There’s some hulking creature there, thrashing at the opposite end in a mess of talons and feathers, but her attention immediately diverts wider. It seems she left one cage only to be thrown into a bigger one. It’s massive and square, an even bigger mouth to swallow her in, but behind the harsh lights and metal are rows and rows of tightly packed people surrounding the cage fight.

“Our first of the new bloods, your very own werewolf!”

There’s a round of applause and yells, but Clarke’s attention snaps to the commentator. Impressively, he looks exactly how he sounds. He’s up on a stand so he’s taller than anyone else, a microphone grabbed surely in his hands and his hair is slimy and slicked back, smirking with his teeth and clearly thriving off the life of the crowd.

She decides he will be the second to die when she escapes.

Emerson being the first. Naturally.

“And our special guest tonight, something that we’ve spent _months_ scouring every mountain just for you all—right from the myths themselves, our first ever HARPY!”

Clarke staggers back as the honest to god fucking _harpy_ flails its way into the ring. It’s _big_ , though difficult to make out its exact full height as it violently flaps long and oddly eye-catching coloured wings. The ends of them, though, hook into big and lethal looking talons that she’s got no doubt could strip her open like meat hung up in a butcher shop. The harpy is a never-ending mess of frantic movement, repeatedly lunging for the cage bars for escape, gaunt though muscled legs hooking around the metal, giving it a grip so it lunge out with its neck and sharp beak at the spectators around them.

It only seems to excite the crowd. They cheer anytime it does so, lurching back but that bloodlust only shining brighter in their eyes as they get forbidden views of the monster before them. Even with the purple-blue feathers cascading over its entire lower half and wings, the further up it travels, the more the human peeks out, and it’s deeply jarring to see the downright _normal_ face it has—the only caveat, of course, being the horrible beak taking up the middle of its face. Its hair is black with subtle streaks of the same dark blue on its feathers. The rare streaks only seem to shine through when the lights catch it just right.

The commentator is still feeding into the crowd and spewing out whatever bullshit that’s meant to rile but Clarke hears none of it. The harpy roughly shakes its head with another horrible, disturbingly human scream and snaps its gaze into her direction, meets her directly into her eyes—stares into with these _human_ eyes, eyes that are almost as blue as Clarke’s own. The unholy combination of monster and human is somehow worse than if it’d just been _monster_ and nothing else.

Clarke backs up as the harpy staggers towards her, raising her hands. “Don’t suppose we could talk this out, hey, one girl to another?”

The harpy screeches like death incarnate.

Clarke winces. “Well, it was worth a try.”

It lunges forward.

-

The first fight she ever got into she was thirteen.

The school year has barely gotten up on its legs and hardly anyone knows each other. All the cliques and groups are still being formed, as inevitably each person drifted towards the most they had common with. No one knows each other’s limits and secrets yet. Usually Clarke is good at blending in, always knows the right thing to say and doesn’t have much struggle making friends.

But one of her uncles had died this week. She looked up to him, too, he could crack a smile on the face of a dead man and went through jobs about as fast as he moved. He was the epitome of werewolf alright, and even if the family shook their head at him he’d had a life to him that couldn’t help but be envied.

He’d died as a wolf. Had chosen the wrong farm to pick when he was hungry. He thought he was being subtle about it, but when he snuck in for that one last time, that one last score, because this it, this is the last time it _is_ —they’d been waiting.

It might take more than a few barrels, but enough bullets will take anything down. They’re a resilient species, sure, have got skin that can knit itself back together, but that’s only if you’ve got time and safety. A place to hide, lick your wounds. Because all luck eventually runs out. All wires finally snap. Her uncle had killed a farmhand in the process, though. It was the farmer that had finally been the one to finish him off.

It appeared in the local newspaper. The farm has been mysteriously losing stock for weeks. With the answers finally there and a body to go with it, the story is spreading like wildfire by morning.

Clarke had only gone to school this morning because she’s avoiding the house where her uncle should have been staying in this week. She just plants herself in the corner of every class, ignoring anyone who tries to interact with her, and is midway into a detailed sketch of what she imagines is her uncle’s heaven.

A whole field of sheep ripe for the picking with no guns trained on him. He used to say sheep was every werewolf’s weakness. That it didn’t matter how much self-control you thought you had, if you were lumbering around on all fours and you saw one; that was it, done for, no chance in hell.

He’d always grin after saying it, though, so she never worked out if he was joking or not.

She’s shading in the craters of a full moon when she hears one of her classmates brag that _his_ brother had been on the farm that night, had been there to help put the stupid mongrel down. Says that he had the story first hand of how it went about, waits till more than one of his classmates begs him to retell and he does so smirking and re-enacting the whole thing like an extravagant play.

In what Clarke still considers is the greatest self-restraint she’d ever exhibited in her entire life, she lasts about three minutes sitting there without doing anything. She isn’t drawing, though. Her pencil is snapped in half and she’s almost vibrating in her seat while clenching her jaw so tightly it physically hurts.

Werewolves don’t get to grieve like people do. It’s what her mother had said that morning, eyes still red and voice scratchy. They don’t get that privilege, not when you die like that. You die an animal, and that’s all that can be said on you. So Clarke sits counting every tick of those three minutes and twenty-two seconds without doing anything. Then Dax, the boy in his mid-recreation, starts miming beating her uncle’s head in with his foot and she bursts up to her feet so fast the desk scrapes the floors.

Everyone is too focused on Dax’s acting to care. If anyone was, then someone might have stopped her when she barrels the length of the classroom and tackles him into the floor. She hasn’t even had her transformation yet—has nothing supernatural about her but her family and an inability to wear silver jewellery—but you don’t need to be a werewolf to throw a punch.

The teacher is just late enough to class to earn her a week suspension. She probably should have gotten expelled, but by the time Mr. Pike has gotten there they’ve already been torn apart, Dax bleeding profusely from a broken nose and Clarke with a torn open lip, bruises on _both_ of their jaws. When Pike demands them to explain what was going on, Clarke doesn’t say anything, and Dax calls her a bitch, but apparently can’t muster the balls to admit he’d been punched out by a girl.

It won’t be the last scrap her and Dax have. Neither of them wants to get expelled, though, so each consequent row tended to happen out of school when the only audience around them was either their friends or streetlights.

School doesn’t solve the problem, either. She’s got enough bans from bars under her belt she’s had to keep a written down list in her wallet. It’s her mouth that lands her in most of the hot water. When you’ve got an instinct to know just the right thing to say, it also means you work out quick _exactly_ what you shouldn’t.

Maybe it’s a little ironic that for once, the worst thing she’s ever gotten herself involved in, and she hadn’t even had to say a word for it to happen.

The pride her mother must feel.

-

There’s a deafening chaos of sound when she’s thrown bodily and slams back first into the inside of the metal cage. Some mix of cheers and hollers, decided entirely on whoever their money was riding on, and Clarke can only _barely_ scramble up to her feet in time for the harpy to go at her again.

Thankfully, the creature is still recovering from a slash at its throat, and she manages to back peddle enough it instead changes tactics. There’s blood spilling down its neck over its feathered chest but the only thing the damage seems to have achieved is marginally slowing it down. It shrieks at her in a horrible sound that grates right at her soul and sweeps it wings, lurching up into the air with enough force Clarke has to block the shower of sand that sprays up on her.

They’re both wounded now, though. Clarke hobbles back, eyes following the harpy as it circles her from above, knocking against the top cage bars while her own gaze never drifts for even second. One hand stays furiously pressed to her side where its talons had torn into her. Thankfully, she can already feel the flesh knitting itself back together, but it’s slow and _painful_. Natural healing has always had pain embedded in the process, anyway.

Even if she would dead by now if she weren’t what she is the fight’s long outgrown its lifespan. And so it doesn’t really surprise when the harpy waits for that exact second where finally, _finally_ , her attention slips. It happens because she trips. She’s exhausted and _bleeding_ and probably in some early stages of blood loss so of _course_ she trips. She rights herself just as quickly, but her eyes momentarily shift off the harpy circling her.

It’s enough.

She’s pinned to the ground in the next second.

All the air in her lungs rushes out in a pained blow, though already she’s twisting to roll out under it. But its talons at its hooked feet shoot out and pierce through her chest, right around her heart so she’s pinned down. Clarke cries out but before it can quite literally just _rip_ her heart out into its claws, her own hands burst up and snatch its lean muscled ankle, squeezing in a vice like grip and _holding_ the fucker there so it can’t move.

Their audience is louder than they’ve ever been. The commentator is trying to yell over the sheer chaos of noise, but his voice only gets swallowed up by everyone else’s. It’s so bad she can even feel the vibrations of it in her chest.

Clarke grits her teeth, blood spilling anyway out the corner of her mouth as its talons spread over her heart pull _in_ , push deeper, trying to tear her from inside. Her grip is too strong, though, and soon the harpy shrieks in fury from it and lungs forward with its beak for her exposed throat.

One of Clarke’s hands surges up and grabs its beak before it can. It’s a risk to dare the chance, but the harpy seems too distracted in being restrained in such a humiliating way to care. The beak is cool and smoother than she’d thought, but she can feel the hundreds of nicks and scratches that it must have built from hell knows how many years of hunting.

This only seems to anger it more. Breathing is getting harder and her lungs feel like their flooding but there’s nothing quite as worse as the horrible swooping sensation in her stomach as suddenly she realises she’s being _lifted_ as the harpy leaps back up into the air—and Clarke’s grip on the talons in her chest means she holds on.

It keeps trying to rip its beak out of her ironclad grasp, but its desperate thrashing means it doesn’t see where its going and they _both_ get slammed back and fourth against the cage bars as it fails wildly in the air. A particularly nasty one finally overwhelms her and she loses her hold on the beast as the crash into the bars jostles the talons hooked into her. There’s this whole, terrifying second where she swears she feels her heart get legitimately fucking _tugged_ and blood immediately coughs out her mouth in response.

The harpy shoves her back into the metal barred wall, pinning her there against it and Clarke doesn’t even _dare_ glance down to the fifteen foot drop below her. Her hands flash out to the talons hooked in to her again to stop it from pushing any further and the harpy just screeches into her face.

What it doesn’t realise is that being held so high up has changed the angle.

It means the harpy is far closer than before. And as monstrous and lethal as the beast is, now that it’s flying it can’t use its wings as any defence anymore. Like the harpy Clarke had been waiting.

The moment it lunges forward with its scream meant to put the fear of a hundred gods into her Clarke just snarls right back, lunging forward too with her eyes burning yellow and every one of her teeth sharpened into a point like the wolf’s.

Flying means it can’t protect its neck.

Clarke lets go of the talons trying to rip her open, with her claws already pushed out from her hands and _waiting._ Her hand surges forward for the harpy’s exposed throat. It realises the ploy a second too late and by the time the harpy has caught on and ripped itself back, to swerve out of her range, Clarke’s already got her fingers crushing around the muscle in its throat and claws hooked in.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke pants, digs in as far as she can with her clawed hands in its neck, and rips her arm back.

Its throat tears open. Near instantly, blood sprays and the talons trying to rip her heart out are suddenly just _gone_. She cries out at the sensation of them being torn out that is somehow as worse as when they’d stabbed into her in the first place.

They both fall.

The harpy goes down screeching and wailing, but at least the fucker’s got _wings_ and Clarke’s not lucky like that. She only barely remembers to protect her head in time to slam violently back into solid ground. The flash of agony through her ribs knocks any trace of air left in her and no doubt will leave a collage of bruises that’ll linger for days.

Clarke groans from where she’s just a bruised heap on the ground. In the background she can hear the harpy’s frantic panicking behind her, the echoing _clangs_ of metal as it keeps thrashing into them, trying to outpace the own loss of its neck. It’s not long before it’s finally too much and it collapses into nothing, too.

For a moment Clarke almost believes it’s over.

But when she manages to lift her head from where the cold sand had been smothered against her cheek, she glances up in time to see that even bleeding out furiously and damn near _seconds_ from death the harpy has no intention of going down quietly. It doesn’t have the strength to get back into the air again, but the beast just fucking _charges_ for her with its wings flapping weakly and uselessly behind it, dives for her on the ground and Clarke’s arm surge up to brace just in time.

A hush falls over the crowd as Clarke disappears under the body of the harpy. They all freeze, holding their breaths as the bloodied, furious creature thrashes from above her and tears into her with all the last fight it has with razor talons and a beak big and thick enough to crush bones. Get a hand stuck in there and it’ll snap it clean off.

It takes almost a full minute before Clarke wrestles out from its hold.

In a flash, now _she’s_ the one on top of them and the flip happens with her teeth clamped surely into the harpy’s neck, biting down and hanging on for dear life. She growls ferociously through the whole time with it and the wolf is so close to breaking out that already, the hands she’s got dug into the harpy’s back for a grip are barely hands anymore, but partway into claws and losing the spaces between the gaps of fingers.

The harpy doesn’t last long in the change of position.

It collapses from under her.

Clarke’s always been paranoid since day one, though, and she doesn’t dare release the neck in her mouth until she’s sure, she is _completely_ sure that its heart is no longer pumping and the thing won’t stumble right back to two legs and go for again. There’s no way she’ll survive another attack.

But the harpy doesn’t move. Its body is now totally still— _dead_ —and when Clarke finally pulls away and spits the flesh and feathers out her mouth the crowd is screaming so loud that it must be shaking the very walls of wherever the fuck they are. Haltingly, she slides off the back of the beast till she’s back with solid ground beneath her feet. A guard that’d been lingering by the commentator raises a horn to his lips, but before he can do anything the commentator grabs it, hisses out _,_ “ _wait._ ”

Clarke doesn’t land on her feet but more tumbles to the sand floor below her. All at once, even through the victorious cheering and enraged yelling at realising the money they’d lost, the audience go dead silent when she drops to the floor and doesn’t instantly get back up.

She spits out blood, just gasping and _gasping_ , trying to suck in enough air but it’s like breathing in through a straw. She’s drowning in open air and she only barely manages the strength to push up to her elbows, growling furiously as that burning sensation twists worse in her chest. Her arms give out a second later.

She can’t breathe and it is the most terrified she has ever been. It even out rivals that the terror and disbelief that’d swallowed her whole when her mother turned up early, unannounced, at school. When she was called out of her class, when her mother could barely look in the eye, that she was already crying, _sobbing_ , that she barely got the words out of who’d they’d lost.

“Come on—fu—fucking come on, come _on_ ,” she chants, still feeling like she’s dying and it’s all over and there’s nothing left when—

There’s a particularly harsh twist of burning agony in her chest, but its rewarded with her heart finally pumping without struggling and her lungs inflate _deep_. Clarke rolls onto her back. She’s panting wildly, but the panic is receding now and she realises with slow rolling shock that she survived. She’d done it.

Apparently she’s not the only one to realise this.

The commentator raises his arm up in a great show. “The werewolf wins!” he shouts, and the crowd yell with him. A low, booming horn echoes and bounces within the enclosed space and the only thing she can think of is wondering how the hell no one in less than a fifty block radius has caught them out by now. They’ve got to be deep underground, or the walls are at least thick enough so it feels like it is.

“The werewolf fucking wins,” Clarke breathes.

She laughs and it’s a sound unlike anything she’s ever made.

-

Emerson is less than pleased as he drags her back to her cell.

Luckily for him though, the damage done from the harpy may have left the realm of _fatal_ but that doesn’t mean she’s in any shape to start something. When the gates crank back up and Emerson storms his way into the arena the only strength she’s got left is to grin at him. Wonderfully, it gets the point across anyway, because Emerson clenches his jaw so hard his neck strains and there’s a dangerous looking vein swelling in his forehead.

He doesn’t say anything as he grabs her arm and wrenches her up. More guard dogs come around, the same ones with the poles and guns but she can’t even keep on her feet, and even someone as brain dead as Emerson can realise that there’s little point. He only growls into her ear and drags her by the arm as she stumbles and slips.

Her eyes stay on behind, watching as four more people come out from the other side of the ring. They delegate with each other, trying to see who’s going to draw the short straw, till finally they grab different parts of harpy and heave it off out of sight.

She watches it right until Emerson pushes her around the corner and she can’t see it anymore.

“You know Emy,” Clarke pants, as Emerson marches her back looking two seconds away from burning down a city. “I’m a little hurt I don’t get any congratulations. I thought we had something.”

His entire body coils with barely suppressed rage, but he doesn’t say anything.

Clarke laughs.

“Look at you,” she murmurs, and this time manages to look up and meet his eye, grinning with her teeth. “Can’t say anything, can you? Wouldn’t want to dent your pay check.”

“You got _lucky_ ,” Emerson snaps. Clarke’s grin widens and one of the guards hastily shoves in his card to unlock the steel door ahead. They rush to scramble it open as if they’re equally shit scared of Emerson’s fury. “We’ll see how you fucking do next time.”

“You’ll be my first fan?”

He only bares his teeth and roughly drags her back into the shit hole she’d first woken up in. The cage door is already still open and Emerson doesn’t waste another second before he’s shoving her in with about as much care as a sack of bricks. But she lands on her front, pain immediately twisting horribly in her chest and she curses, rolls onto her side clutching at it, pushing at where the aggravated wound is.

She looks up with only her eyes to see Emerson back with his insufferable smirk. “Try not to die in here. Wouldn’t want to disappoint your _fans_ now, would you?”

He spits at the floor of her cage and storms out. The door slams shut with an echoing bang.

Now finally left with no threatening eyes on her, Clarke allows herself to curl in and breathe through the pain that she’d been pretending wasn’t there. Her eyes flick up though, and at finding the vampire staring at her looking about as shocked as Emerson had that she’d survived, she manages a weak laugh.

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” Clarke breathes, smiling something different now. It at least seems to break the vampire out of her stunned stupor because she blinks.

“You lived.”

“That’s up for debate,” Clarke grunts. She manages to pull herself up so she’s at least sitting, letting her back collapse against the cage bars and breathing a little too hard even just for the minor movement alone. A sharp pain twinges in her chest and she hisses through her teeth. “Goddammit…”

She looks down, eyeing up the damage for the first time and almost immediately cringing. There’s blood all over chest and soaked through her shirt, tears in the fabric from where the talons had been, and when she dares to touch the wound at where one of them had pierced into her flesh, furious pain spikes through her in reprimand.

 _Definitely_ still an open wound. Shit.

“You’re hurt,” the vampire says, her voice shaking slightly. Clarke frowns and glances over to her.

“I’ve had worse hangovers, it’s nothing.”

But she finds that the vampire isn’t meeting her gaze at all, instead staring a hole into her chest, pushed up the closest she’s ever been to the bars with obvious hunger in her eyes. It takes a second for Clarke to realise it’s a _different_ sort of hunger than she’s used to.

“ _Oh._ Right, sorry. Bit cruel, isn’t it? Like waving a drumstick in your face.”

The vampire swallows. Even if there’s magically imbued metal between them, Clarke still finds herself shuffling herself back until she’s the furthest away. Her fellow prisoner is still eyeing her like a last meal, and her eyes are even a different colour now, the iris gone dark and red.

“I’m just gonna be over here,” Clarke says, furthest back into the corner of the cage. “If you _do_ end up killing me in my sleep, at least be gentle with me, alright? If we’re doing it rough you need to buy me dinner first.”

The vampire doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move.

Clarke just laughs quietly to herself. “Alright,” she whispers. “Alright.”

Exhaustion eventually wins out, but she watches the vampire right until her eyelids slip shut.

-

The vampire doesn’t kill her.

She doesn’t know how long she’s out for. It’s a sharp metal _clang_ that has her jerking awake seconds after she should have, because her body’s trying to _heal_ itself now, doesn’t want any interruptions unless it’s life or death. It means she misses it, when the door opens and they’re not alone anymore.

The wolf in her reacts before she does. She rips herself up to her feet, backing up as far she can go and already she’s snarling blindly and new teeth are pushing out, new _claws_. By the time she’s actually awake again she has to blink the world back into its usual colours. Take in her surroundings, as her heart rate slowly climbs back down. Sleeping out alone in the woods too long tends to ingrain habits that can’t be shaken off so easily.

Emerson is smirking at her from just in front of the cage, which isn’t anything surprising. His baton is out in his hands and it’s clear what was responsible for the harsh wake up call. For once, though, Emerson is not the person that first demands her attention.

It’s the man next to him. The commentator.

He’s wearing the same suit he was wearing during the fight. Unlike the guard dogs with him, who just wear the same tactical gear, his outfit is all _for_ style and nothing else. Probably the brains behind the operation. Or at the very least the face.

“Sorry to wake you,” he says casually. Clarke stays quiet, watching him. “I wanted to meet with you, you see.”

“Lucky me,” Clarke mutters.

The commentator grins. His teeth are all perfectly white, probably cost more than her car and then some. “My name is Cage, by the way. That was quite a show you gave tonight. I’m impressed. What’s your name?”

Clarke stares at him.

In the corner of her eye, she sees the vampire move. Tilt her head slightly. Watch her.

Cage sighs, though his arrogant grin doesn’t waver. Was probably expecting this. “I only ask out of courtesy, after all, you brought in a lot of money tonight.” His hands had been held neatly behind his back, but now he gestures with one, to the lap dog behind and the guard immediately comes forward and hands him something.

Cage holds it in his hands, flips it open. It’s a wallet. And what Clarke realises with dawning horror, a wallet she _recognises_.

She grinds her teeth.

“Clarke Griffin,” Cage reads off her driver’s license. He smirks, looks up with just his eyes. “Don’t worry, we didn’t touch your spare cash. We’re not monsters.” He hands it back behind without ever taking his eyes off her. “But back to the business at hand, _Clarke_. I wasn’t lying before, you gave an impressive show tonight. Enough so that I can forgive the two of my men that you killed. A kindness that I hope you will appreciate.”

Clarke arches a brow. “I’m sure daddy is proud.”

Cage has been the perfect picture of unwavering confidence, but she sees it when he tenses. Something twitches in his jaw before he smooths out his face again. He’s not fast enough that Clarke misses it, and she smiles like a knife, knowing she found something.

This time when Cage grins at her it’s cold and unforgiving.

“You made us good money. Keep that up, and you might earn your freedom.”

She stills noticeably and Cage’s grin widens. Two can play the same game.

He turns to leave as suddenly as he’d appeared. Clarke watches his back, trying to imagine how it’d feel to run him down when there’s nothing human to her, bite down right into his neck and taste the last flutter of his pulse. But Cage keeps walking, only clicks his finger once over his shoulder and slips out. Someone rushes into the room the moment he snaps his fingers and a guard comes through holding a tray in their hands.

They set it down in front, slide open the hatch and shove the tray through.

Clarke doesn’t move till she knows it’s only the vampire that’s with her. Strains her hearing right till there’s no one else, the dust settled and calm. “He’s lying, isn’t he?” Clarke whispers, low and hopeless. “He’ll never give freedom.”

Her eyes shift out to the vampire. There’s no response, but the vampire meets her stare, doesn’t tear her eyes away and it’s obvious what she thinks.

It surprises her, for some reason. Despite how _bad_ this whole situation was, there’d always been something; a last swell of hope, a tiny light flickering there at the end of the tunnel. Werewolves are the furthest thing from lucky, but even the most dreamless of people have to sleep eventually.

That last breath of hope punctures and Clarke is more disappointed in herself than anything else.

She blinks away the betrayal in her eyes. Kneels down, eyeing up the food and is surprised to find it’s… far better than before. Someone must have slaved for at least an hour or two over this. Matter of fact, it looks better than a lot of the food she had when she _wasn’t_ caged. For a second she considers not touching it out of spite.

But her body still aches with her wounds, her stomach’s growling and clawing at her, and so she eats.

In the back of her mind she starts counting. Of how long it’ll take before someone realises something is wrong, that she’s gone. That someone will sense it somehow. That this time, even though she’s always disappearing, it’s _different_ now, it’s not something she can come back from. Because someone will know, they have to.

They _have_ to.

-

The first time she transforms it happens in a school bathroom.

Because of _course_ it does.

It’s near the end of the school year. She’d gotten plastered the night before, and her mother had given her _hell_ for it this morning, but it means that now, when she all but bolts for the bathroom her friends don’t really question much of her. It’s borderline offensive really, because when that first uncomfortable burn twists in her stomach as she’s sitting at her desk in class, her friends barely blink.

She dry heaves, because her throat feels wrong and tight and swelling all at once. Someone next to her laughs and jokes if her hangover is making its regularly scheduled appearance. She would tell him to fuck off, as she usually does, but the first thing that registers is pure, adrenaline-fueled panic.

She knows what it is immediately. She’s right in the age for it, even a little late, so of course everyone in her family has been ribbing on her for weeks now. Will it ever come up? Will it ever surface? It happens sometimes. That it doesn’t. Maybe she’s going to be the first in a generation. Maybe her blood is wolf enough to recoil at silver, but that’s it. The wolf, it’ll never run in her, it’ll never be anything but what she should have had.

Obviously she’s wrong. Fifteen year olds are good at that.

She shoves herself from the table and runs. Her friends laugh from behind her, miming throwing up that only pushes them to laugh harder. She doesn’t hear it. Clarke shoves any who gets in her way, doesn’t care or notice when more than one flips her off as they roughly stumble back, and the second she sees any sort of bathroom she shoulders open the door and locks herself into the nearest stall.

How you know, when it first happens, the first warning sign is that particular feeling in your throat. Her mother had explained it. She’d been only twelve when it happened for her. For some reason, it’s always the throat that jumps the gun first, that starts shifting before anything else. It’s the way the throat closes in and chokes you from inside out. It’s trying to push out, for the neck, but it’s too early, it’s not _ready_ and so the only thing you can do is endure it out until the rest of the body kicks in.

Clarke collapses to the cold tiled floor, gasping and cursing out her entire bloodline. Her insides are writhing and the sensation makes her want to vomit but she has to bite back her groans when she hears the bathroom door swing open.

“You okay in here, Clarke?”

It’s Harper. It probably shouldn’t surprise that the girl had followed her in here. She’s always been more concerned than she lets on, has held her back from being especially stupid on more than one occasion. She must have followed after her.

“I’m—I’m fine,” Clarke manages to get out, which is quite impressive considering she’s keeled over on the floor now, one hand gripping on so tight the edge of the toilet it creaks under her grip. There’s a sharp snap of pain in her fingers, and claws start pushing out at the joint just up from her knuckles, her fingers curling in and in as the bone pulls in with it and _pushes_.

Harper hesitates. “Do you need me to get the nurse?”

Clarke almost laughs. Oh yeah, she’ll be a great help. As a first meal maybe.

This is a profoundly bad situation.

She’s barely eaten anything today. The idea of trying to eat anything this morning after everything she’d gotten up to the night before had left her nauseous and nudging away her plate. And if there’s one thing you never want a werewolf to be, it’s hungry. Transforming burns enough of the reserves in you that by the end of it, once you’re on four legs, you’re probably _lighter_ than what you were going in. It’s simple maths, really.

But if she’s running on nothing, if the only thing she ate was dinner last night, that she then threw right back up, then shifting out in a school of defenceless pupils is about as good idea as walking into a hospital on the night of the full moon.

Point being: very, very fucking bad.

Something claws into her stomach. She groans, but it comes out like gravel and smoke, like nothing human, and when she goes to grit her teeth her gums are swelling with the new ones that are trying to push out. “Yes,” she gasps out. “Please. _Go_.”

Harper trips back, yells for her to just _stay right there_ and runs out the room. The moment she does Clarke stumbles her feet and unlocks the stall door, shoves it open and lunges forward, has to grab on the edges of the sink counter just to keep herself up. Her head snaps up to the mirror in front her.

Her eyes aren’t blue anymore but a murky yellow. Her teeth aren’t right either, they’re bigger and _sharper_ and her hands, when she looks down, they’re filling only the barest requirements of what they should be anymore. Her insides are burning inside her, are _changing_ and she knows she’s got minutes at best.

Harper will be back any second. And if she doesn’t get out before she does, then she might just blow up the whole supernatural world. At least she’ll be remembered for something.

Take that, mom. Look at me now.

Clarke’s eyes drift to the window that’s up near the ceiling.

What has she got to lose?

She takes a step towards and almost immediately crumbles down to the floor again. That twisting in her gut pushes further, but worse is the gradually building pressure right at the bridge of nose like a headache after a night of no sleep. It worsens and deepens until the bone starts to push out, trying to reshape itself, to fulfil the prophecy it was made to be the second she was born.

Clarke scrambles to her feet and jumps. Her hand shoots out and latches onto the edge of the windowsill. Distantly, she hears what normally she wouldn’t have, the fast approaching of rushed steps and Harper muttering that she should be okay, it’s probably nothing, but you _need_ to see her, miss, because she was groaning like she was hurt before.

It’s a nice enough thought.

She pushes open the window and crawls through. It’s a miracle she even fits. She’s never really believed in anything, but for just this second maybe there _are_ some sorts of werewolf gods out there, that are finally looking her way. Once her legs have swung over she slides off and lands near perfectly in a crouch, the thing trying to claw out of her already changing the way she sees the world. How to move in it.

The air smells sharper than it usually does. It’s crisp and fresh, flushes deep out her lungs and she can taste almost _everything._ She knows immediately that it’s sure to rain this afternoon from the wet tang in the back of her throat, that someone had been smoking out here before, the remnants of ash and smoke coiling the air, and that—

The bathroom door swings open from behind her inside. Harper comes in, calling out for her.

She frantically scans the area around her. The closest thing to privacy she can find is the bike shelter, where they’re all racked up and there’s a hood over the space. The one spot that’s just out of range of the sweeping cameras and teacher patrols so all students regularly sneak into.

It’ll do.

By the time she manages to scramble to it and collapse into the concrete floor it’s too late. She can’t hold it back anymore, not for anything, and this time when she falls into ground she’s ripping off her jacket, trying fervently to get her shirt over her head.

She fails.

Because her hands, they’re not actually hands anymore. And if she’d thought the pain in her hands was bad it’s nothing compared to when it spreads to the rest of her. Her bones crunch and grind in the worst pain imaginable till she’s only keeping herself up by palms and the balls of feet, as her heel keeps pushing and _pushing_. Fur crawls up out her skin while a snout forces its way through her face, where she’s snapping her new teeth and jaws the entire way. The sound it creates is beyond nightmarish.

By the time the agony is all finally over, it’s the body of a wolf she’s panting in. The only clothes salvaged that aren’t in pieces by her paws is her jacket, but even that is being dribbled on with slings of saliva that trail from her jaws, the saliva that had filled her mouth when the new teeth pushed in. To ease the change.

And even if the school behind smells like _heaven_ , especially with a stomach that’s clawing and chewing at her on nothing, her new eyes jump out to the woods that sit across the field first. Some distant, but stubborn enough part of her pushes for her to go there and so she’s running before she can think better of it.

She’s faster than anything she’s been. The ground splits past below her and it exhilarates her in a way nothing has. She’s bolted across the field and into the woods so quick she’s barely a flash of blond fur and that’s it. Sprints right into the trees, running on for so long that even the sun starts tiring and clambers back down from its perch.

Only by the end of it, once she’s shifting the way back and it somehow feels twice as worse as before, does she end up standing back up on two feet and sniffing for the way to follow home. It was something her mother had told her about. That even if the both of you were sitting at opposite ends of the planet, you can always find your kin, if it comes down to it. There’s something in the blood of the wolf, something that links you no matter what.

Her mother says it’s a survival thing, an adaption to being hunted for centuries. Clarke thinks it’s simpler than that, though. It’s simply a matter of love. You lose so much as a werewolf, your life, your humanity, any chance of stability, the fact you’ll become accustomed to grief long before you’ll become accustomed to anything else.

This is the trade off. The apology. The world’s way of tugging you close. Offering something back.

Violence and grief, that’s built into werewolves, but so is love, then. Even once all the hairs have pulled back in till she’s only got skin, her hands stretching out easily into five fingers, she can follow her nose that’ll lead her right back to where home is. It’s something that she’s always struggled to describe. That is instinct and nothing else. A tug in your chest, like there’s a hook dug right around your ribs, that’s reeling you in and in.

Clarke follows where it leads her to home. To her family.

It’s what werewolves always do.

-

By the time Clarke finally catches on to it, she feels like an idiot for taking so long.

Admittedly she _has_ been more than a little preoccupied, considering the current situation. But still. The realisation comes so late, she’s almost swearing at herself, feeling like she might as well trade in her blood, never walk on four legs again. Because even the blindest of werewolves should be able pick out when something else is _starving_.

Watching others, that’s what her kind is best at. You only ever move on a turned back and you watch out for the weak before anything else.

She doesn’t know much about vampires. But once it’s been a week since she’s woken up in here and every day that the guards come in and hand over her rations, they don’t give the vampire anything. Initially Clarke thought nothing of it. She doesn’t know how often vampire need feeding anyway, so maybe that’s just how it is. Maybe they’ve got a metabolism so slow—because of the whole _being dead_ thing—that they can feed once a _year_ even and that’s that. So what’s a few days without?

But she’s wrong. That much is obvious now.

Clarke stares at the vampire. There’d been signs, little things that she can’t ignore anymore that had finally tipped her off. Vampires are pale by nature, but it’s _different_ this time. It’s less from lack of blood and more sickly, a sheen of perspiration to her skin, previously flowing hairs now stuck to it too. And that hair, how before it’d been braided into albeit messy but beautiful patterns, are all loose and wild now. Breaking apart. The vampire hasn’t touched them. Maybe she’s so hungry she hasn’t even noticed.

“They’re starving you, aren’t they?”

The vampire grinds her teeth. She doesn’t look to her, doesn’t move from where she sits how she always sits. Cross-legged, back straight, hands on knees. More regal than anything locked up in a cage should act.

But the cracks are getting more obvious now. Her hands, instead of being leisurely draped across, are digging tightly into her skin. Every now and again, her eyes keep opening from where normally they’d remain closed and ignoring the world. Now they’re flicking out. Scanning the room. _Searching_.

Resting on Clarke for a little too long for comfort. Deciding.

Clarke grins, though, sat on the floor too, casually leaning against the cage bars with her knee propped up and wrist resting on it. “How long they been doing it for? Can vampires even die from starvation?”

“No,” the vampire grits out. Her entire body is almost shaking with coiled tension. If Clarke didn’t have the metal between them, she knows that poking at her anymore would be nothing less than a death sentence.

Clarke’s eyes light up. “I was beginning to think you’d never talk again.”

The vampire’s eyes open. She still looks on the brink of murder, but after exhaling sharply through her nose and glaring it seems to settle enough of her to remain calm. Ish. “Long enough,” she finally says, answering the other question.

Clarke loses her smile. “Why are they doing it?”

The vampire does something that Clarke has only once before seen her do.

She shrugs. _Casually_. As if vampires are not most the regal and prim beings around.

“I will have a fight soon. After that, they will stop.”

Clarke nods. It makes sense in a morbid way. “They always do this? To get a show?”

“No. They would never have lasted this long if they did.”

“Ah,” Clarke sighs, leaning her head back. “Punishment, then?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m a curious person.”

The vampire clenches her jaw, eyes still burning a hole into the poor wall in front of her. “Evidently.”

She waits for something more, but the vampire doesn’t say anything else. Going by the obvious tension that’s pulling just about every muscle into a wire that’s seconds from snapping it’s not exactly surprising. There’s an ache in Clarke’s chest though, that makes her lean forward and watch the vampire.

Over her life she has had a lot of bad ideas. Like a _truly_ long list of bad ideas. She’s always been a jump headfirst and swim type of person, anyway, and that has rarely landed in her in ideal situations. But her heart’s been something of a fool too, and it means that more than anything she’s always had an urge to reach out her hand even when she knows it’s going to get bit.

The worst of her bad ideas tend to be the kindest ones.

“Alright, then.” Clarke clears her throat, has to shake her leg when she goes to move and the limb has long gone asleep. After a couple whispered curses she adjusts until she’s pressed as close as she can get to the vampire, leaning her side into the bars and earning a wide eyed stare as she starts reaching her arm through.

“What are you doing?” the vampire asks, but she’s moved too now, has flipped onto her knees in a blink and looks a breath away from springing back.

“To tide you over,” Clarke explains. Her arm is all the way into the vampire’s cage now. She turns it over, so her wrist is facing up. “I’m assuming my blood is human enough it’ll work, right? Just, maybe not as effective.”

The vampire is trembling. Her eyes keep jumping between Clarke’s own and the offered wrist. It’s obvious that it’s taking every ounce of her control to keep still. “You don’t understand,” the vampire says, her voice just shaking and _shaking_. “You—you survived, that means you have a chance.”

Clarke smiles wryly. “A chance for what?”

The vampire stares.

“Look, you just seem in a bad way, alright? I just want to help. It’s nothing more than that.”

“Why?”

Clarke shrugs. “The world’s already against us, isn’t it? So we’ve got to look after each other. It’s what we’re supposed to do.”

“This won’t change anything,” the vampire says, but her eyes are locked on her wrist now. Leans forward a little more. Iris flickers into something darker. “If we fight, this won’t mean anything.”

“I know,” Clarke whispers, because she does.

One last time the vampire’s gaze shifts up. The blinding hunger seems to inch back for a second, the mist clearing enough that when she eyes her, it’s obvious it’s because she’s trying to see if Clarke is lying, if she knows what she’s giving. Clarke merely holds her stare and raises her brow.

“To be clear, this isn’t permission to drain my dry. You try to kill me and I will not forget.”

In what makes no sense at all this somehow makes the vampire relax, the tension easing out of her shoulders. Finally, her iris melts into dark red, her fingers coming out and wrapping around her wrist. They’re cold—which isn’t surprising—but it _does_ take Clarke back how soft they are.

For a creature that must have seen whole civilisations rise and fall, probably has more blood on her hands than Clarke could even conceive, there’s no scars, no ounce of roughness to her skin. Completely timeless. It makes Clarke want to see the rest of her. To trail every inch of that skin and see if it’s the same, if there’s any evidence of the sheer scale this woman must have been through. To see it with own her eyes. Make sure it’s real with her lips.

Thankfully _that_ train of thought is effectively derailed because the vampire opens her mouth, revealing fangs that seem longer than they did before, and bites down into her wrist. Clarke hisses through her teeth, the sharp sting of pain making her instinctually jerk her arm back. But the vampire holds strong in what all supernatural strength can give.

The vampire groans in hungry relief, and while there might have been some attempt of restraint at the start, when the human in her was still present, now that there’s _finally_ blood on her lips it’s clear where the transition has gone. It’s beyond a surreal sensation, feeling her blood leave in such desperate speeds. For a moment she has to blink, grab onto the metal bars with her other hand and keep her there, hold her up. Maybe feeding a _starving_ vampire of all things hadn’t been the grandest of plans.

But the pain recedes quick as the rest of the monster kicks in. It eases, after a moment, and Clarke starts to understand why vampires haven’t been found out yet. Majority of the reason is probably just because people don’t _realise_. There’s that sharp pinch of pain, but then comes in what must be the natural anaesthetic, to what numbs it and transforms the process into something near completely painless and borderline pleasurable.

Evolution wise, Clarke has to give them credit. They went the right way about it. Really, all they’d have to do was to get involved into some heated make out session and they could _probably_ get away with some feeding and the person would never even know. Kiss down the neck, a prick of pain, small apology, there. None the wiser.

It’s honestly quite a bit insulting. Maybe she should have been born into a family of vampires. Werewolves have clearly gotten the worse part of the deal. And, to make matters worse, _vampires_ don’t even have to worry about fleas. And fleas suck _shit_.

Whatever. At least she’ll always have the feeling of running wild under the full moon. There is nothing in the world that can even come close to comparing that. Stupid vampires don’t get _that_ , do they? Assholes.

It’s a few minutes later that her vision starts to go a little hazy and she sways, has to blink away the spots in her eyes and the sudden dizziness that overtakes her. “Alright,” she says breathlessly, slurring just a little, “that’s enough. You’re good.”

The vampire—maybe more than a bit predictably—does not stop.

“Come on Drac, don’t make me…” her words get lost midway to her almost flat out passing out. She has to jerk her head back, but that pulls sharply at the still-healing wounds in her chest. The one’s that have only just healed themselves back together.

The vampire keeps going. Clarke bares her teeth, a snarl ripping out her throat as in one harsh pull she yanks her arm back. It works, but it tears at her wrist, pain slashing through that makes Clarke hiss and immediately move to cover the bleeding wound. In the same second the vampire bursts forward with it, snarls with bloodied fangs exposed and her hand jumps out to grab her.

Clarke lurches back, her own sharpened teeth starting to push out and the warning growl that grinds out her chest begins to shift, her throat changing, the familiar burning lighting up her insides—

They watch each other, but slowly, with her whole body feeling seconds from full on shifting in response to the threat, the vampire’s snarling trails off into silence. The red leaves her eyes, her hand comes back into her own cage, and while there _is_ still lines of blood leaking down the corners of mouth that speaks very clearly of what she is; she looks human again.

The vampire licks what’s left of the blood off her lips, blinks at her. “Sorry,” she finally says, her voice still breathy and out of it.

Still, Clarke relaxes. So maybe vampires don’t have it that great either. “Sure.”

She looks down at her wrist, dares to lift her hand off and eye up the wound. It’s not so bad. Ripping her arm back had meant that the teeth lodged deep in them had dragged through. It bleeds, but it’s nothing that won’t disappear over the next few days.

“Thank you.”

Clarke glances up. The vampire hasn’t moved, but there’s guilt in her eyes now. Gratitude and regret all at once. Clarke smiles, though. “Don’t thank me yet. You’ve got to be careful now, you’ve got wolf blood in you. You’ll be coming for my head once the hairs start growing.”

The vampire for the first since she’s met her looks genuinely amused, then. It’s almost impossible to tell, but Clarke’s been spending what little entertainment there is to offer watching her fellow prisoner, mapping out every inch her so if she wanted she could have painted her with her eyes closed, even.

She knows what she looks like when she’s riled up with fury and trying not to show it, how her body gives her away. So now, Clarke sees the softening in her eyes, the amused twitch at the corner of her mouth.

The vampire shakes her head with that almost-there smile. Like a ghost that’s lovesick. “That’s not how it works. At all. I’m dead, for one.”

“You look pretty alive to me.” Clarke’s smile shifts into a grin. “Also just plain pretty, too.”

It takes a long while of internal debate, but finally, the vampire reveals it.

“My name is Lexa.”

“Lexa,” Clarke says, tasting it.

Lexa’s eyes never shift off her for even a second.

-

She starts using Lexa’s name more after that.

It’s less because she _needs_ to and more because it makes her smile every time, knowing that she’d earned this. And, hey, it’s not like a little cockiness ever hurt anybody from time to time.

In the beginning, she starts with idle questions. Things so surface level they couldn’t even float on water because it’s already gotten swallowed up by the air. And Lexa is as resilient to answer as always. Just getting her name had required an _actual_ blood offering, so even questions about what her favourite colour always got met with slotted eyes.

Clarke has never been one to back down from challenge. Especially one that’s so attractive, too. Lexa seems to have realised this, because slowly but surely, she grudges a few reluctant responses. _Extremely_ reluctant more like, but responses all the same.

The first of her questions are pretty stupid. It’s the only way Clarke’s learnt to squeeze an answer out of her. Because Lexa actually answers the stupid questions, as there’s nothing that comes attached with them. It’s like a sin so minor you can’t even feel guilt over giving in.

“Do blood types taste different?”

“Slightly.”

“What’s your favourite?”

Lexa sighs, here. “I’m not answering that.”

Clarke grins. “So you _do_ have a favourite.” Lexa’s annoyed silence only makes her smile spread wider. “How do you tell though? Do you have to taste the blood to find out, or do you just _know_?”

“You can smell it,” Lexa offers grudgingly.

“What does my blood taste like?”

“Regret,” Lexa mutters, and that’s the end of the conversation.

Of course, it isn’t the last.

-

“How old are you?”

Clarke is lying on her back. The world is upside down, her legs propped up vertically along the cage bars. Lexa is mediating like she always is. Clarke is starting to wonder if this means Lexa is either completely amazing at it, or utterly terrible. Did she mediate all the time because she was chasing the inner peace she’d never catch or because she’d found it and was determined to never let it slip again?

“You must know little of vampires to ask me such a question.”

Clarke tilts her head, looking over to her. The floor is cold from where it presses against her cheek. “You’ll have to teach me, then.”

Lexa’s eyes are closed, but Clarke sees how her lips purse, eyebrow creases. Evidently she’d realised that she had unwittingly opened the line to something she never should have offered. Point one to Clarke.

“Come on,” Clarke pushes, knowing the longer Lexa stays the silent, the lower the chance she’ll talk again, “humour me, won’t you? At least tell me if would I find your name in the history books.”

Lexa sighs through her nose. Except—no, not a sigh. A _laugh_. Or at least the nearest thing for someone like her. “Only a fool hurries to be remembered.”

“You don’t want to be remembered?”

“I’m a vampire,” Lexa says, like it’s an answer. She even opens her eyes and looks to her. Pathetically, Clarke’s stomach flips over like it always does when she gets the rare view of depthless green eyes. “We cannot be remembered. Otherwise…”

Clarke raises a hand, closes her fist like she’s holding a stake and mimes jabbing into her own heart, mouth opening in a silent scream before going comically limp. When she cracks back open her eyes, Lexa is doing her usual glare at her. But there’s something off about it. Something that sits a little too light and warm in her eyes. It’s gone so quick Clarke almost thinks she’d hallucinated it.

“Impressive,” Lexa says, sarcasm as dry as ever. “You should have considered a career in acting.”

Clarke hums. “You know, I _would_ be a great actor. I should’ve become one. I reckon I could have whole droves of people sitting in cinemas just for me.”

This time, the sigh through her nose is _definitely_ a sigh. “You are obscenely wrong. You would be playing to an empty theatre.”

“But would you be there?”

Lexa frowns. She looks at her, narrowing her eyes in obvious suspicion. “Why would that matter?”

“Because it’d be you.”

She meant it to come out sounding like something grossly flirty, to make it a joke as she always does, but instead her voice comes lower and quieter than it should have. Lexa blinks at her, slowly, and Clarke tears her gaze off and ignores how itchy her skin suddenly feels under Lexa’s stare.

By the time Lexa speaks up again it’s been so long Clarke almost jumps.

“I would go, but only to see you fail so spectacularly.”

Warmth floods through her at the quiet admittance. It takes everything in her to bite back her grin, and she fails anyway, ends up smiling to the ceiling like that same fool who aches so damn badly to be written down.

Point two to Lexa.

-

“Can you turn into a bat?”

“Some of us are trying to sleep.”

Clarke is idly swinging from the cage ceiling this time. Her hands have long gone numb from gripping the metal bars for so long, and after finally having enough of it she heaves herself up so she’s upside down, instead hooks her heels around the bars and lets her hands go. The world turns over and she tries to reach her fingers to the floor, but they hover a few inches too far.

It makes it look like Lexa is sitting on the ceiling now. And also very much _not_ trying to sleep.

“But vampires don’t even sleep.”

“I was talking about you.”

Clarke hums. “What if I told you werewolves don’t sleep, either?”

Lexa’s stone face holds out an impressive thirty seconds before the edge of her mouth finally twitches. “You’ve been sleeping every night since you’ve been here, Clarke.”

“Maybe I was just trying to throw you off my scent.”

Lexa laughs through her nose. “Maybe.”

-

“What’s it like?”

Lexa sighs. “What is what like?”

“Dying,” Clarke explains, turning her head so she can look at her. She’s sat right in the corner of the cage, pressed the closest she can get to her. Lexa is how she always is but some small part of Clarke likes to think she’s inched just a bit more towards her. Maybe she’s just dreaming it, but in a place like this that distinction doesn’t really matter.

Lexa opens her eyes and meets her gaze. It’s been days of Clarke’s constant pushing for conversations and Lexa has been getting worse and worse at fending her off. “What is it like to shift?”

Clarke raises a brow. Lexa has never once asked about _her_ before. “Will you tell me if I tell you?”

Lexa doesn’t say anything, only keeps staring at her.

Clarke squints and bites her lip as she mulls it over. “You ever broken a bone before?”

Lexa doesn’t quite smile, per se, but there’s an amused tug at the corner of her mouth, like she’s never heard a more ridiculous question. Privately, Clarke adds a couple extra centuries to what she thinks Lexa’s age is. “Yes, Clarke.”

“So think of that, but apply it to every bone in you.”

Lexa frowns. “That must be agony.”

Clarke shrugs. “At the start, sure. It stops hurting once you’ve done it enough. The pain’s there for less than a minute, it’s not long enough to lose your mind over. It’s sort of like stretching, but, you know, more violent.”

Lexa nods slowly, taking this in. It’s an oddly endearing sight.

Clarke nudges her knee in Lexa’s direction. “Come on, your go.”

Lexa gives her an exasperated look. Still, she’s quiet a moment, taking the question far too seriously like she always does. Eventually she nods to herself and looks up at her. “It’s like waking up.”

Clarke tilts in her head in confusion. “Which way?”

She means it to ask if Lexa was talking about her turning into a vampire instead, how it’d felt _after_ she’d died rather than before.

But Lexa merely arches a pointed brow. If she weren’t so dignified, then maybe she’d have smirked with it. Clarke sees it anyway, not on her mouth, but in her eyes—the one place that her emotions can’t be hidden behind walls or under stoic masks.

It doesn’t matter what you are. It’s always the eyes that give you away.

“You’ve got beautiful eyes,” Clarke says like it’s a confession.

Lexa’s expression shifts, and she looks away. To anywhere else.

They don’t speak to each other for the rest of the day.

-

Lexa’s fight happens the next evening.

They still haven’t fed her, and so when Emerson shoves his way in to collect her and bring it her out, Clarke blinks at seeing at least _ten_ guard dogs trailing with him from behind. There’s so many they barely even fit in the room. Some of them already have their weapons up and primed, but Clarke can see the shake in every one of their hands. The smell of the fear is so rank she’s almost tempted to wrinkle her nose.

What they don’t know, of course, is that Lexa _has_ been fed. Clarke had offered her wrist a second time before, just this morning, as somehow they both seemed to sense that something was going to go wrong today. Lexa had been the same sort of hesitant as before, yet Clarke wore her down the same way too and so eventually Lexa could only sigh but still, when Clarke offered her wrist through the bars she took it.

With careful subtlety, Clarke makes sure the bite marks in her wrist are covered by her hand and it’s facedown. She’s got little to fear, though. All of them are so focused on Lexa—on shouting warnings and slowly, _slowly_ , opening the cage door with five separate people raising crossbows—that Clarke could probably erupt into some insane song and dance number and not one of them would even glance in her direction.

Lexa slowly stands up. The guard dog nearest, crossbow aimed right on her heart while he stands with the cage door open, swallows nervously, an honest bead of sweat dripping down the side of his head. Calm as anything, Lexa merely walks up to him, steps out of the cage.

She glances around the room. Even Emerson is gripping too tight to his baton, every muscle in him strung tight as he eyes her.

“Well?” Lexa looks to them all. “Shall we begin?”

The guard from before glances to Emerson before cautiously stepping forward. He reaches out to grab her arm, but the moment his fingers are about to touch, Lexa’s eyes snap to his and even without seeing them Clarke knows they must be cold like death.

“You would touch me?” Lexa whispers lowly.

“Enough,” Emerson snaps. “We’re on a time crunch, _Commander.”_

Lexa stares the guard down another second, seeming to enjoy it how he blanches and trips back before finally removing her gaze. Clarke can’t help it any longer and she laughs quietly to herself at the whole display. What utter fools.

Emerson hears and his eyes jerk to hers, sneers at her.

Clarke smirks and gives him a lazy salute from where she’s lounging on the floor.

Surprisingly, no one makes another go to grab her as Lexa moves. They part enough to let through then swallow her with their numbers, weapons aimed dead centre on her as they circle around, but still, none of them make the mistake to try hold her down. Clarke suspects this was a lesson learnt a long time ago and most likely ended exceedingly bloodily.

Lexa stops by the door, glances back to her. Emerson snarls at her to move, but she ignores him and Clarke straightens up at finding Lexa’s eyes boring right into hers. It seems she _almost_ says something, opens her mouth for just a second, but already her brow furrows and she snaps her jaw shut.

Instead, she nods. Seems to struggle even with that.

“You just need to survive,” Clarke says, her voice soft and a borderline tease. She hopes it hides just how fast her heart has started pounding.

For the first time, the corner of Lexa’s mouth twitches and _this_ time it wins—and she smiles.

Clarke is so taken with it, that by the time the room has emptied out once more she’s still staring out at where Lexa had stood, the image of it burning into the back of her eyelids so that never forgets. Because honestly, and terribly, it all felt a little like the goodbye you don’t want to give. Some selfish and terrified part of her almost wants to give it back. If only so then there’s no trade, so she doesn’t have to _lose_ something.

Distantly, the crowd erupts into bloodthirsty cheers.

-

The fight doesn’t last long.

Most don’t, really.

Lexa comes back limping. She walks in on two feet, but there’s a horrible chunk torn out her thigh that’s definitely the work of something with enough teeth that even Clarke’s cringing from a glance at it. It’s bleeding the whole way down her leg, leaves her footsteps bloody and a red streak trailing the stone floors. Claws marks are slashed over her arms, too, like whatever beast it’d been had gotten on top of her and Lexa must have braced her arms to protect her face, her _neck_.

It’s the one place vampires fear, probably. The heart at least requires a stake, but the only thing the neck needs is to be severed, torn off. No vampire can survive that. Even ones that have been around since the dawn of time, right back to the first and right to the eventual last. It’s the oldest way to be killed for them.

Except, it looks as if Lexa wasn’t quite fast enough. Her arms might have taken the brunt of the damage, but there must have been a second of real hesitation on her part because there’s a particularly nasty bleeding scar running down the side of her face, just missing the edge of her eye and _not_ rendering her half-blind. It stops halfway down her neck, but there’s a small chunk ripped there at her throat, like the claw had hooked in last second, torn the flesh as it was shoved off.

Clarke doesn’t even realise she’s jumped to her feet and has her face forcefully pressing into the metal bars till the cold shock of the metal registers on her cheeks. The same pack of guard dogs cautiously follow in her with, crossbows aimed dead centre on her back, but Lexa is almost swaying on her feet and Clarke knows it’s probably only pride alone that’s the reason she’s not crawling along the ground. Lexa would die before showing weakness to her enemies.

Whatever she’d fought, it’d clearly been something that didn’t know what mercy was.

Clarke’s eyes track every exhausted step of Lexa’s journey back to her cage. A guard unlocks the door and quickly hauls it open. Lexa bares her fangs as she passes, snarls through her teeth vicious enough he lurches back almost a whole metre in response.

Lexa steps in and closes the door herself.

They lock her in and flee off just as quick. Idly, Clarke wonders if they actually fear Lexa more now when she’s like this, half-dead on her feet and struggling to stand. There’s a lot less human in her when she’s like this. Less likely to _remember_ she was human, once, and tear into the first thing to breathe too loudly. Clarke waits until they’re alone again before speaking. Can only anxiously watch as Lexa sits back down with far less grace than usual.

“You okay?”

It’s a stupid question, but there’s something constricting horribly in her chest that she refuses to acknowledge at the sight of Lexa so beaten down.

Lexa huffs a laugh. “I’ve had worse hangovers.”

Clarke kneels down next to her, or at the least the closest she can get. She tries to smile at Lexa’s joke but her eyes get caught on that scar spanning to her neck. There must have been a moment, a _real_ moment, where Lexa felt pure fear. It makes her think that maybe vampires are actually the ones that fear death the most. The fact that they’re immortal probably makes it all that much worse.

“You remember that?”

Lexa just rolls her head against the bars and looks at her like _really_.

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Shut up. You were starving and eyeing me like a last meal. Pardon me if I question the integrity of your memory, then.”

“I remember,” Lexa says, still sounding fairly insulted by the insinuation.

“Vampires,” Clarke mutters with a shake of their head.

Lexa glares at her for that and Clarke just grins back at her.

It’s not long after that Lexa tries to adjust the way she’s sitting, but even the minuscule movement is enough to have her wincing and hissing through her teeth. Her hand jerks out and pushes at the deep wound in her thigh. Clarke tries to push closer to her, eyeing the wound, but already her face is squashed between the bars. There’s nowhere else to go.

“That looks pretty bad,” Clarke murmurs.

Lexa shakes her head distractedly, still focused on staunching the aggravated wound. “It will not kill me. It is nothing.”

“I think we have different definitions of nothing.”

“Most likely,” Lexa admits, not even pretending to fight it. Clarke clenches her jaw and tries to ignore the helpless frustration that floods through her. Lexa must sense it, somehow, because her eyes finally shift off the wound and glance to her. “It’s fine, Clarke. There’s nothing you or I can do.”

Clarke breathes out a tired laugh. “My mother is a doctor, Lexa. I can’t see people hurt without wanting to do something.”

Lexa blinks in obvious surprise. “Your mother is a doctor?” Clarke nods. “Is she a werewolf, also?”

“Mhm.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a werewolf doctor,” Lexa mutters, seemingly more to herself than anything. She sounds genuinely curious by the knowledge and it endears Clarke in a way she doesn’t expect.

Naturally, her first instinct at the honest emotion is to make a joke out of it.

“Because usually werewolves are the ones that _send_ people to the doctor, aren’t they?”

Lexa shoots her a reprimanding look. “I just mean I find it impressive, is all. That takes a lot of control.”

Clarke shrugs, doesn’t know what to say to that. In her mind she’d always seen her mother’s dedication into healing as more a way to ease that guilt inside of her. They’ve all got blood on their hands, a tally they carry on their backs to their graves. This just seemed like the best way to wash it off. Try and balance back those scales. Earn what they’ll never get.

“Must have been a nasty fucker to pull that chunk out of you,” Clarke says, jerking her chin in Lexa’s direction. “They didn’t find _another_ harpy or something, did they? Because I swear there’s only so many mountains those feathered bastards can be hiding in.”

It’d just been her attempt to diverge the conversation away to something easier, but Lexa goes too quiet after words and immediately Clarke feels the cold clench in her gut.

She leans forward.

“What _did_ you end up fighting, anyway?”

Lexa glances away and doesn’t answer. Clarke narrows her eyes, trying to decide what to make of the reaction when her eyes drop to that claw mark down Lexa’s face again, and it really doesn’t take all that long till that dread is unfurling in her stomach because she realises that she actually _has_ seen those sort of injuries before, that they bring back all the memories she’s spent her whole life trying to bury.

She should’ve gotten it instantly, honestly. The only reason she didn’t is because it’d been _Lexa_ who’d gotten hurt and Clarke’s always had a heart that’s never done well with staying in her own chest.

Clarke pulls back. Forces in a slow breath. “It was a werewolf, wasn’t it?”

Lexa swallows, but she nods.

Her hands tense from where they’re wrapped around the bars. “Did you make it quick?” she asks, so quiet it’s a miracle Lexa could even hear her.

Lexa does, though. “Yes.”

Her entire body feels numb and the only thing she can do is nod.

She doesn’t really notice it as it happens, but somehow she finds that the gap that suddenly opens up between them isn’t just figurative but has a literal distance, as Clarke releases her hold on the bars and shuffles away till she’s pushed right back into the other end.

Lexa watches her do it, though she doesn’t say anything. Something pained flashes across her face yet all she does is sit and stare. For someone like her, Clarke doubts this is the first time she’s ever killed someone else’s people. But then, well, she’s self-aware enough to know she’s done the exact same thing too to someone out there. Everybody is someone else’s someone. You can never hurt just one. There’ll always be a ripple.

It still doesn’t feel right.

Lexa once told her that if it ever came to a fight, then it wouldn’t matter any kindness given. They’ve been talking so much, though, so _often_ that Clarke had forgotten that in some way. Maybe thought things could be different.

But what would have been better? Lexa’s still, lifeless body or some nameless one of her own people’s?

It was the fact that Clarke knew the answer that made bile rise in her throat.

They don’t speak for a while. At some point Emerson comes striding back in with that same insufferable smug grin that Clarke aches so deeply to rip off. Except when he comes in, this time clutching a few blood bags in his hands that he carelessly chucks through into Lexa’s cage—when he glances up and sees the noticeable gap between and the tight tension in the air, his grin actually _widens_.

And Clarke knows, then. Knows in that second that every step of this had been deliberate. It hadn’t just been her that had noticed how close they were getting. They’d been watched the entire time, and having Lexa fight and kill a werewolf had been an obvious way to put a stop to that.

Her hands curl into fists in her lap.

When she escapes this—because she _will_ , that much Clarke has to have faith in—Emerson will be the first to die. Lexa can have Cage, can bring down just how many it takes to quench that deadly fury that she sometimes catches rare glimpses of in Lexa’s eyes, the sort of all-consuming rage that takes centuries to build _,_ but Emerson… _Emerson_ is fucking hers.

Clarke’s eyes shift up to meet his.

There’s this thing that her mother told her, once. It’d been just after her uncle was killed on that farm when she was a kid, just after her suspension had eased up. For a whole week Abby didn’t go to work. Apparently she had a handful of vacation days to burn up and for this she did. That week, she didn’t leave the house. She waited. Clarke came back from school each day to find her sitting in the living room, next to the window that was cracked up just enough she could peek her nose through.

After that week she had disappeared for three days. When Clarke asked Jake where she’d gone, he’d just sighed and shook his head. “Your mother,” he said, and nothing else.

It’d been the middle of night when Abby finally got home, that Clarke glanced up from where she was doing last-minute homework on the coffee table to see her mother walk in naked through the front door—didn’t say anything, either, eyes only momentarily flicking down to Clarke before wordlessly she kept moving to her bedroom. Clarke just watched her go with mild curiosity before going back to her work. It wasn’t the first time she had seen someone or other turn up like that.

Abby came back out clothed a few minutes later, knelt down next to her.

What she’d then told her—gently taking the pen out of Clarke’s hands, making sure she was listening, was _really_ listening—is that there’s this thing, with actual wolves, the sort of wolves you’d find in reservations and woodlands and mountains and all those places they ache so deeply for.

Real wolves, they don’t like attacking people. They’ll go for them if they’re threatened, sure, but the way we stand up on two legs instead of four and the centuries of hunting have driven them to turn tail at the first sight of you. They kill only to survive and sustain themselves. No revenge, no enjoyment.

What she needed to remember, Abby had finished with, is that _that_ was what made them and us different. What made werewolves monsters wasn’t the _wolf_ part in their name; it was the _were_. It was the person hiding behind those yellow eyes. If they were nothing but animals then their lives would have been a hell of a lot easier, really. They would know peace like no one else did.

A few days later Clarke turned up at school and like always, there was a new rumour circling round. This one, though, this was one that everyone kept their voices low for, never did it around teachers and spoke most of it only through their eyes and nervous hand gestures. Barely anyone had the guts to spit it out point blank. Clarke only managed to get a clear answer out of Wells, the nearest thing she had to a best friend at that point.

He’d whispered to her that the owner of that farm, the one near the outskirts of town, had been killed, apparently. Not on his land, but when he’d gone out for his monthly fishing trip. It was in a remote enough area that it had taken a whole three days before anyone even realised something was wrong. That someone had gathered enough concern to pull up to his cabin, knock on the door.

Something wild had broken in, they said. Had left him as nothing but something for even the coroner to wince and circle around.

Clarke had thought back to her mother. To that night she’d come home with nothing on her. To the way that when she had hugged her, before she went to sleep, she’d smelt like earth and twig leaves and something sharper, more metallic. Then Wells told her the _name_ of the farmer, and it took everything she had in her to smother her reaction.

It was the same one. The same one who’d murdered her uncle. Her mother’s older brother.

Everyone’s got some sort of monster in them.

Even werewolves do.

Especially, maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the first time i can also happily say that ive written most of this story in advance. the next chap is written so thatll go up about a week from today, and im about halfway through the last, so thatll Hopefully go up two weeks from now. i might actually have a regular update schedule for once in my life.
> 
> thank you for taking the time to indulge me. i almost didnt post this bc things have Not Been Good, but i sincerely hope you enjoyed. i wish youse all a good one :)


	2. and all that i have found

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you even get ANOTHER werewolf-themed song, totally free of charge. but thats more just my own fault.  
> also! thank you so much for all the kind comments. i suck at replying but please know i treasure each one and they motivate me like nothing else. thank you for the serotonin. its usually a dog eat dog world out there, so i appreciate the kindness :) 
> 
> hope you enjoy lads. as usual, it's only me that goes over this so all mistakes are proudly mine.

_I smile at the moon; death is on my face_

_And if you wait too long_

_Then you'll never see the dawn again._

_[\- Werewolf Heart by Dead Man’s Bones (2009)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5a9lW9_Wzs) _

The first time Lexa died she was twenty-three.

The year is 1646.

It’s a little inevitable, the way she goes, and it’s not really her fault.

What’s inevitable, of course, is that she dies in battle—that was always the way she was going to go, Lexa was sure of that—that the ground that she breathes her last on is one she’s grown and bled for, where she could tell you just where every single blade of grass stands and exactly why she’ll never let someone take that from her.

This is her home, her people. And lying there in an empty field, all the harvest picked dry and the stalks and grass bloodied and scattered with bodies, Lexa’s being one of them, the only thing she’s got the strength left for in those last moments is to stare up into the deep, deep night sky.

She’s completely alone.

It’s the reason why Lexa is the only one still breathing in this field, this village. When the soldiers had come, intent on wiping them all for their resistance, they’d all known the only way of survival was to run. Lexa agreed. But the soldiers were going to be there any second, and what they needed more than anything in that moment was _time_.

They needed someone to stay back. Hold them off. Distract them.

And, well, stood in that barn, glancing to each of the faces Lexa knew like family, she’d known exactly what she was going to do. It didn’t matter that ever since that night she had been caught with Costia none of them would even so much as spit in her direction. Lexa put up her hand and said she would be the one to do it. They had all whipped their heads to her, but only one actually objected to it.

It was Gustus, of course—the man that had raised her as his own after he’d found her as only eight summers old, alone in an empty house with no parents left alive to care for her. It had been a snap decision for him.

Gustus, that fool, that damned-loving _fool_ had stayed back with her, even after Lexa’s desperate convincing to beg him not to.

“We will greet the gods together,” he only said, holding her shoulders and trying to smile through his heavy beard. His eyes shined so brightly Lexa was tempted to shield her own. “Or we will greet them not at all. You will not be alone. I will never let you be, not again.”

Now, though, lying there in the dirt unable to move, bleeding out slow from a sword that’d been shoved through her stomach, Lexa can’t help but blink the tears back in her eyes.

Funny how it all works out. Lexa _is_ alone. Gustus, she hadn’t _seen_ it but she’d heard his yell through the red haze of the battle. By the time she had snapped her head around to find him all she’d seen was the shadow of his falling body. Her scream had come right down from her soul and the next swing of her sword had slashed right through the fucker’s neck.

Of all the ways to die, she supposes there could be worse. The night air is so cold here, but there’s no energy left in her to even lift her arm, try rub the numbness out her hands. All she can do is breathe through her rattling lungs, stare up at the endless night sky above her and wonder if the gods are watching her, in this moment.

Do they care? Have they _ever_ cared? Do they know her name, had watched her grow like the mother she couldn’t remember, or was that asking too much for someone looking over so many? Maybe when she gets there—stands before them for that first time—they won’t know a damn thing about her. They won’t know a single fucking thing.

Tears slip down the corner of her eye, sliding sideways towards her ear.

Is it blasphemy to say that Lexa doesn’t even want to meet them? Not now. Not _yet_.

A man screams.

Lexa frowns. She tries to lift her neck, find where the source of the noise came from, but she only just about manages to roll her head enough to see the shape of a figure there in the dark hunched over a body—the man that must have been the source of the scream—but instead of anything Lexa expects the figure might do the last thing to come to mind is when the figure pulls the man up to its mouth, and _bites_ into his neck.

Her breathing picks up on its own.

The Night Reaper.

It’s supposed to be a story. The demon that only shows its face when the sun is gone. The reason to never stay late after dark and to _listen_ to what the adults say because you wouldn’t want end up as another meal to the demon’s plate, do you? Lexa tries to move, to do _anything_ but nothing responds enough and she only uselessly squirms against the ground.

The attempted movement wasn’t a good idea. It pulls in some wrong way against the hole in her stomach, makes her shout involuntarily against the blinding flash of pain. Of course, of _course_ , the demon’s head snaps her way for this. It drops the now lifeless body in its hands and stands up.

Lexa doesn’t really know what she expects the demon to look like. Maybe horns, maybe eyes as black and soulless as the night around them, a skin so red like the blood and gore it feasts off. What she doesn’t expect is for the demon to come up to her and stop with its boots right at her head.

It’s _human_ shaped boots. And even through the dark Lexa can see the face beneath the cloaked hood it’s hiding under. It’s the face of a _woman_. Older than Lexa’s own, though not by much, but the only evidence that this creature is clearly a demon hiding within human skin is the blood smeared on its mouth. Its iris is blood red.

It is also deeply beautiful. A beauty that Lexa knows can never be trusted. That’s how it lures you, beckons you out of your home till you’re following it into its own. Its dark blond hair flows freely and gorgeously down the sides of a sharp, sharp jaw, though the roots of it look almost black unlike the rest.

Lexa bares her teeth.

Even if she can’t move, she refuses to give any satisfaction of an easy death. If the demon wants her she’ll fight against it the whole way.

“Come to watch, demon?” Lexa spits. It hurts to force the words out but she doesn’t fucking _care_. What’s a little pain worth when there’s seconds left at best?

The edge of the demon’s mouth curls up. “Why would I? Have you something entertaining for me to watch?”

“I shall entertain your death,” Lexa snarls.

The demon crouches down next to her. “Kill me, then,” it says, still smirking in a way that is somehow both predator but distinctly human. “My weeks have been so long as of late.”

Lexa _does_ try to kill it. It’s about as effective as throwing a pebble into a pond and expecting a tidal wave.

The demon stares down at Lexa’s twitching, but eventually still, arms, and that smirk only widens as it laughs through its nose. It’s an insulting enough sight that this time enough humiliated fury rushes through her she _finally_ manages to life her arm, ignoring the horrible tear of agony at her stomach as she scrabbles for her sword amongst the mud and brings it swinging to the demon’s neck.

Its arm surges out before Lexa can even blink and catches the weapon. It doesn’t even bother to grab it by the hilt, but just holds the sharp edge of the blade with a bare hand. Lexa tries to rip it out or even push it forward but the sword doesn’t move in the demon’s ironclad grip. Around its fingers, blood starts leaking through the gaps of them.

Lexa’s brow furrows. Its blood is red. Like hers. It doesn’t make sense for demons to bleed the exact same way as them.

The demon easily tears the sword out of Lexa’s weak grip and flings it away carelessly. Lexa’s arm falls back to the ground, but instead she presses it to her still-bleeding stomach. The unending fire that seems to have spawned within the wound doesn’t stop burning and for a near whole minute the entire world appears to go blinding white in the face of it.

For a second Lexa thinks she has died.

But then her eyes slide open again, and she finds the demon staring down at her. Its smirk is gone.

“You’re going to die,” it says, strangely conversational.

Lexa glares and says nothing. Demon or not, it can go fuck itself.

“You’re going to die _slowly_ ,” it points out as if Lexa isn’t already uncomfortably aware of this. “In agony I’d suspect, too. You should already be in it.”

Lexa ignores that exact agony she can feel crawling its way up her body. The demon seems to take her silence as agreement, though. If a very cold one.

“I can make it quick,” it offers.

“You will do no such thing,” Lexa growls. It’s not the best idea, as it tugs something weak in her lungs and she starts coughing violently—has a moment of real, paralysing fear as blood coughs up her throat and she can’t move her head enough, to get it out, so it just keeps choking and choking and _choking_ and—

The demon grabs her shoulder and gently pulls her on her side, grabs her head with its other hand and tilts it so Lexa can cough the excess into the dirt. It waits until the aggressive hacking is stopped and only then does it slowly push Lexa onto her back again. After realising that she hadn’t died from choking on her own blood, Lexa can’t help but stare up confused at the demon above her, panting and struggling to regain her breath.

“What—what do you want?” she manages to get out through gasping breaths.

The demon hums. “I don’t quite know. You intrigue me. You are clearly afraid of me, though you refuse to show it, even while you lay dying. You attempt to kill me with barely the strength to look me in the eye. I offer you a kind death, and you’d still rather spit into my face.”

Lexa scoffs sharply. “There is no such thing as a kind death.”

The demon’s brow ticks up. “You know, of all the bodies I have come across here, it is only you and one other that is without the soldier’s armour. Surely, all these corpses lay here were not of your doing?”

“They would kill my home,” Lexa bites out. The seething hatred in her voice only seems to intrigue the demon more.

It smirks down at her. “So you slayed them all, then? Why do so alone and not with your own by your side? You must have known you would die for such a cause.”

Lexa loses some of her fire. “They needed to run,” she says, quieter now. Heavier. “Someone had to.”

“Ah. A war hero, then? That is what you crave to be remembered as?”

For the first time Lexa laughs. It’s hollow and wet and the oldest sound she’s ever made. “They will not remember me. They will not care enough for my blood spilled. I’m nothing to them.”

The demon frowns. “You would offer your life to those that would cast you aside?”

“They are my people,” Lexa says simply.

“You die for a people that do not _care_.”

“I will die protecting those I love.” Lexa smiles up at the demon like there’s nothing left. “What else is there to die for?”

The demon does not answer.

Lexa closes her eyes. It’s getting increasingly harder to speak now. Each word is taking more effort than the last, and her shaky breathing isn’t fairing well from it. Her last moments are fast approaching, most likely. She’s not at _all_ happy to be sharing them with a godsdamn _demon_ of all things, but, well, there is some strange satisfaction at least in meeting a demon for herself, anyway. The Night Reaper isn’t a myth. Lexa will get to pass knowing that exact answer for herself.

“My people suffer too,” the demon says, after what could have been minutes or centuries.

Lexa blinks her eyes open. It takes a few tries before she gets it. They feel heavy, like she’s gone months and months without sleep. The expression on the demon is different to anything from before. It looks serious now, nothing smirking or causal on its face. It frowns down at her.

She doesn’t say anything back, just eyes it. The demon’s strange words almost make her smile, though. Of course a _demon’s_ people would suffer. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? What demon knows of peace?

“Tell me,” the demon says, softly. “Do you want to die?”

Lexa swallows. She does not speak.

“What would you do, do you think? If you were to live?”

“I would find my people,” Lexa says honestly.

The demon raises its brow. “They left you to die.”

Lexa wants to shrug, shake her head, but no lower part of her body is responding to her. The burning pain in her stomach gets worse. “They are my people,” Lexa gasps. She doesn’t know how else to say it.

The demon stares down at her. “I could save you.”

Lexa frowns, still panting through the building agony.

“I could make you like me. You would never know death on its own, not unless it was forced. You would never breathe again, though you would live and walk as if you did.”

Lexa’s lip curls up from her teeth. “I will not side with a _demon_.”

“I’m not a demon,” it corrects, gently. “My name is Anya.”

Lexa’s frown only deepens.

Anya crouches down lower to her, hovering over her like the reaper. “You should not have to die out here. Not for someone who would barely muster the respect to carve out your gravestone. You think yours are the only to know pain? We have wars and suffering like you could never dream. You know barely a _scrap_ of what the world holds. And you would throw this all away, throw _everything_ you’ve barely begun to conceive, and for what? Your loyalty to those who won’t even offer it in return? Your pride?”

“You have been fooled into otherwise,” Anya goes on, but she lowers her voice to a human softness that no demon could replicate, “but you are young, child. You are _young_.”

Lexa’s eyes finally spill over and she does the most selfish thing she’s ever done in her entire life.

She admits the truth.

“I don’t want to die,” Lexa whispers.

Anya nods. “I can make it so you would never. But, you must understand that—for some, that’s far worse than having an end waiting for you. Being immortal, it is not something you can rescind.”

“I will let you save me,” Lexa pushes out, “but on one condition.”

For this, Anya actually lets out a genuine laugh. “You lay here dying at my feet, my being the only hope for your survival, and yet you have the nerve to demand negotiation?”

“You sat down and talked to me, didn’t you?” Lexa shoots back, and even a demon like Anya doesn’t have an immediate retort for that. Instead she watches her for a long moment before gesturing out tiredly with her hand, allowing her to make her offer. Lexa tries to ignore the dark spots creeping in at the edge of her vision. “You will bring someone else back, too. Gustus.”

Anya looks over her shoulder. “This is the other body, correct? The one that stayed with you?”

Lexa just barely grunts out an affirmative.

“What a curious one you are,” Anya mutters, but she glances back to her and nods her acceptance of the deal. “You are sure this is what you want? This saving is not out of kindness. I need help.” It seems to pain her to admit that. “My _people_ need help.”

“Yes,” Lexa grits out. The world is blurring into streaks. She almost can’t even make out the outline of Anya’s face in the night.

Anya watches her for another stretched moment, as if gauging something that even Lexa couldn’t understand. Eventually, though, she must come to an answer, because she reaches down and grabs Lexa’s wrist, brings it up to her lips.

“ _Hofli wamplei nou get yu in feis nowe,_ ” Anya says under her breath, and while Lexa doesn’t understand the language she understands the ritualistic tone of her voice, the slow and time-honoured pace in the words. Anya bites down into Lexa’s wrist, and then after sucking only briefly—aware of how much blood Lexa has already lost—she pulls away, instead turns to her _own_ wrist and bites into that.

She stretches out her hand to hover above Lexa’s mouth.

“Last chance to turn away,” Anya offers.

Lexa leans up.

-

They don’t talk an entire day.

It’s the longest either of them has gone.

Lexa keeps trying to catch her eyes and Clarke keeps pointedly ignoring that. It’s less of a deliberate choice on Clarke’s part, but more that she just _can’t_. She doesn’t want to look at her and see what she knows she’ll see, and worse, what she’ll know she will _feel_. It’ll take one glance—just one fucking glance—and Lexa’s face will be earnest and desperate and genuine and Clarke won’t be able to hold on to her anger.

It doesn’t help matters that the anger isn’t fair and is wildly misplaced. There’s nowhere else for it to go, though. For all intents and purposes Lexa really is the only other one in the world right now. That burning hatred she holds for Emerson and this place is already taking so much out of her, directing at least some of it Lexa is just _easier._

And, yeah, it’s selfish as hell to throw the unjust blame onto Lexa just to save herself of that, but fucking _sue her_. The only thing she’s known for near two damn near weeks is the same five by five foot square of metal. If she can’t owe herself just an ounce of selfishness in _that_ then she may as well cut her heart out and offer it to someone else more needing, because it’s certainly not beating enough for herself.

The silence is eventually broken by Lexa, finally.

It’s the first time that’s ever happened.

“What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to learn but never did?”

It’s a bizarre enough no build-up question that it achieves exactly what it wanted: to make Clarke look up.

Clarke blinks at her, frowning and almost wanting to bite down the disbelieving laugh trying to break out but already, _already_ it’s too late and she meets Lexa’s eyes. She sees exactly what she knew she would. The righteous anger tries to stay with her, but she’s already heaving out an exhausted sigh and her whole body goes lax into the bars. It’s just not worth it.

However this doomed venture will end, Clarke knows one thing, at least.

It’ll definitely be with Lexa there.

“Long division,” Clarke says, not even a hint of a smile on her mouth.

Lexa is so honestly taken back by the stupid answer she laughs. It’s more a huff of air, but it’s a sound that Clarke has never once heard before and she can’t help how she grins at hearing the sound, hating the way she treasures every second of it.

“That’s not an answer,” Lexa says with an amused shake of a head.

“‘Course it is. I don’t know it, do I?”

“I was hoping for something more substantial.”

Clarke smirks. “Sounds like a you problem.”

A quiet lulls between them, but it’s different from before. Lexa must feel it, too, because that tension that’d seized her ever since she’d come back from the fight actually releases, then. Her shoulders fall and that slight crease in Lexa’s brow smooths out. Clarke watches every inch of the transformation with a sort of grim resignation. It’s like they _both_ want this to end in the worst way possible.

“You know I had this cousin once,” Clarke says out of nowhere, with her stare fixed firmly to the ceiling. It stops her eyes from saying too much. “And it’s—it’s stupid, right? But the way she died was from chicken wire, of all things.”

Lexa blinks in obvious confusion as to why this is relevant at all.

“She was a werewolf,” Clarke explains.

“How does a _werewolf_ die from chicken wire?”

“The way we always go,” Clarke says seriously, “because the world wasn’t made for us. She’d gotten into someone’s garden, right? A garden with _chickens_. The way in, that was easy, she’d just cased the house, waited until the guy had left to go mope his hours at some bar. All wolfed out, all she had to do was rip a hole in that fence. Chicken wire is good at keeping _chickens_ in, but it’s not good for much else.”

Lexa keeps quiet for her, doesn’t say anything as Clarke rambles. As her voice gets worse with every second.

“It was an easy massacre. The pen was left looking like a pillow fight, but when she was down in there muzzle deep—that’s when the house lights switched back on,” and Clarke glances down just long enough so she can shoot Lexa a sad little grin, showing just how unsurprising this turn of events is, “because of _course_ he’d forgotten his wallet, hadn’t he? And now he was coming back, and he just had to take one glance in the back and he’d see the bloodbath there waiting in his garden.”

“She panicked. If he saw her, he’d kill her then. Or, the more _likely_ option, she’d kill him, and then she’d have to run and hope the cops weren’t looking her way then. She scrambled to get back out of the hole she’d ripped, but all that panic meant she slipped for just one second—just _one second_ —and then she was tangled in it, wrapped in all of it like—like being smothered in a blanket.”

“He found her,” Lexa guesses, when Clarke is quiet for too long.

Clarke swallows. “It was just one second. But it slowed her down enough that he got outside and saw her, and then he saw all those bloody feathers, and then he was rushing to snag that rifle he kept waiting in the shed and shot her right there while she kept twisting over herself.”

“The only way we even found out what happened was the next night when her sister was at that bar working, she managed to hear about the guy that was ranting how all his chickens had gotten eaten and all the revenge he’d had. And she remembered that her sister hadn’t come home last night. And she just knew.”

“I’m sorry,” Lexa offers through a grimace.

Clarke laughs quietly, for that. “Nothing to apologise for. It’s stuff like that that’s why we don’t last all that long. Even with the wolf you killed, if you really did make it quick, then…”

“I was turned on a battleground,” Lexa offers in the ensuing silence. Clarke’s eyes snap down to meet hers. “I had been left to die. The vampire who saved me—Anya—she warned me that the reason she was saving me, it wasn’t for me but for _her_. They were losing so many of their own to war and survival and she was desperate to stop it.”

Clarke takes in the admission. “Did it work? You all found peace, eventually?”

The edge of Lexa’s mouth tilts up. “I doubt we’ll ever have real peace. We’re the closest we can be, though. It’s a little ironic, I think, but I believe the fact that we _don’t_ die just makes us fear it all that much more. Everyone’s so afraid to turn their back. Trying to force any of sort negotiation to even playing fields was _not_ easy.”

“Do all your kind really live forever?”

Lexa shakes her head slowly. “Most vampires die in just their first decade. They forget the new rules they have to play by. You build resistance, the more years you gain, but in the beginning even just a graze of the sun will burn to the bone. And they just forget. They forget to fear the sun, to come back in time; to feed, to hide who they are, then hunters catch wind of them… and we can’t ever afford to have even one lone vampire lead them back to the entire coven, so…”

For a moment she seems to be overtaken in memories.

Finally, Lexa merely sighs and glances up with an empty smile. “No one truly wants to fulfil their immortality, anyway. Our minds stay human. The oldest vampire I ever met had been around for well over a thousand years. Maybe even two. It took me a month of searching through some remote mountains in India to find her. Anya had made me search for her, to teach me.”

“Teach you what?” Clarke asks, embarrassingly taken with the story.

“She was completely out of her mind, the vampire.” Lexa closes her eyes, here. “I tried to speak with her—even just to pay respects to one of the oldest human creatures in _existence_ —but all she did was paint the cave walls, over and over and over. When she couldn’t speak to me, I went and followed the paintings through the cave system, but they never seemed to end. I think she was writing out her life. Like that could forgive her of it.”

“When was this?”

Lexa’s brow twitches, trying to think back. “About two hundred years ago, I believe.”

Clarke does her best to act as nonchalant as possible in wake of the knowledge that Lexa must be well _over_ two hundred years old. “She’s probably still painting, then.”

Lexa smiles even as her eyes stay closed.

-

This time when the pack of guards come filtering in through the room, Clarke knows exactly what it is and raises her chin. She doesn’t get up from the floor, though, only idly watches as the guard dogs fill up the tight space and Emerson comes shoving his way to the front, that same old smirk plastered on his face—except that tonight, it’s _particularly_ feral and bloodthirsty.

There’s no need to guess why.

None of the guards are holding crossbows. Plus, Emerson wouldn’t be excited like this if he was here for Lexa. Clarke knows he’s still itching from the _last_ fight she was in and how that ended. If his dreams come true then he’ll be eagerly dragging her limp, lifeless body out across the sand tonight.

It’s not a dream Clarke has any intention of fulfilling.

“Time to get up, doggie.”

“Not very good with names, are you?”

Emerson’s eye twitches like it always does when she talks back. “You won’t need a name when I drag your corpse out of here.”

Clarke smiles like the devil. “I’m not dying here.”

“Get her out,” he snaps as he steps back, gesturing out sharply with his hand to the cage.

The guard dogs converge on her and Clarke only casually stretches her leg out on the floor. Checks her nails, quirks a brow up at the shaking soldiers in front of her. The nearest one to her has a gun trained right on her, but it’s the real, _vengeful_ fear in his eyes that draws Clarke’s attention most. She eyes him closely and the undivided attention seems to make the guard stiffen up almost violently.

Her eyes get caught on a spot just below his hand. Where his sleeve has ridden up enough that she can see a flash of white, a faint patch of red sitting on the underside of his wrist.

Clarke’s gaze snaps up to meet his. A truly vicious grin spreads across her face. “So you _did_ survive. Just got out of hospital, I’m guessing? Got that doctor seal of approval?”

The guard swallows. A bead of sweat runs down his head. “You’ve got ten seconds to stand up,” he spits out.

Clarke ignores him. “You smell like it, you know. You ever had that hospital smell in your clothes? It’ll be _days_ before you wring that smell out.”

“I said get the fuck up!”

Clarke leans back into the cage bars and shrugs lazily.

Emerson comes forward and snatches the guard’s arm—the _non_ -injured one—roughly shoves him aside. “Enough of this,” he barks, and flicks his baton out so it’s lighting up with electricity.

The sight of it makes her tense up despite herself. There are still old burn marks on her back.

Emerson must see it, because his face shutters into something truly horrifying. “Get up,” he orders, his voice deathly quiet now. His cold eyes never shift from hers.

Clarke stares at him.

Emerson bares his teeth. “Don’t think I won’t drag you by your fucking hair, mutt. I was trying to be nice, but if you wish so deeply to do this the hard way, then _fine_.”

He pulls out a key and shoves it into the lock, jerks it open.

Clarke lunges out to her feet before any of them can even blink.

But Emerson had clearly been _counting_ on this. He jumps to his side in the same second he’d pulled the door open, and so Clarke’s lunge takes down a _different_ guard instead. She fights against it, like she always will, but it goes much of the same as last time and their numbers overwhelm her quick. It ends with Emerson’s knee pinned down on her back and her face squashed against the cold stone floor. She writhes from underneath him, anyway, trying to twist out, but all she achieves is snarling ferocious enough it _grates_ in her throat until the muscles in them shift to deepen the sound.

The guards instinctually step back at hearing it, but Emerson remains immovable above her.

He leans down towards her ear.

“You think you’re the first of your kind to ever come through here?” he whispers to her, even as Clarke’s struggling gets worse at having him so near. She snaps her teeth out towards his voice and he jerks his neck back only just in time. “You’ll die in here, _Clarke_. You will. If you don’t believe me, then believe the numbers. You will never leave this place with a pulse still beating.”

Something sharp pinches into her neck.

“Then I’ll walk out of here taking yours,” Clarke seethes, and it’s a goddamn _promise_.

The drug kicks in soon after and there’s no force she could posses that can stop her eyes from slipping shut, even if the whole way she’s fighting it right till her struggles exhaust out, finally, and she goes limp as the world blackens out into nothing.

Her dreams are full of ocean blue and never-ending water.

-

It’s not drowning that forces her awake this time.

It’s a kick to the ribs.

So, y’know. Fifty-fifty on what’s the worse method, really. At least this time her face and hair aren’t drenched and she doesn’t have to suffer getting sand stuck to every string on her head. She’d been granted a whole single shower before, a few days after her first fight, and surprisingly enough having five women with guns trained directly on you while you rinse out enough blood and grime for _years_ of intensive therapy is not, in fact, a recommendable experience.

The crowd’s jeering is already pulsing in her ears as Emerson snatches her arm and roughly pulls her to her feet, only giving her a couple seconds at best to blink back into awareness and get her legs working from under her. It doesn’t immediately work and there’s an artificial numbness lingering in her muscles that has her tripping over her feet as Emerson forcibly drags her forward.

The only reason she doesn’t instantly face plant is most likely because of the bruising grip on elbow.

“Whadda you got f’me this time?” Clarke mumbles, trying to get the feeling in her mouth back. Stupid bloody tranquiliser. On the bright side, though, Emerson’s quick pace is no doubt entirely deliberate. Drugging her had made them late. It is very satisfying knowledge to realise.

“Nothing you will survive from,” Emerson spits out through gritted teeth.

Clarke’s laugh echoes against the deep underground walls. Even in the low floodlight, she can make out the hard and jagged rock ceiling above them. “Oh Emy, you know I’d never leave you alone like that.”

Emerson smirks and glances down at her. “I will enjoy watching you die tonight. You’re fighting a _crowd favourite_.”

“Thought that was me,” Clarke pants. The world is still blurring in and out and she has to blink the streaks out of her vision.

Emerson ignores her. “They call him The Undefeated,” he goes on, even downright _grins_ at her and it makes her teeth ache to taste his throat. “He’s the second longest running fighter here. No one who’s stepped in with him has ever come out alive.”

Clarke frowns. “Who’s the first?”

“Who do you _think_?”

Clarke’s eyes drop to the ground. Lexa. Right. Of course. Who fuckin’ else.

He shoves her around a familiar corner and the tunnel light is already waiting for her down at the end. The crowd’s chanting gets louder with every second, but if it’s even possible they sound even _more_ bloodthirsty and excited than they did before. Whatever’s in there waiting for her, it’s probably something very, very fucking bad. The sort of you-will-never-feel-fear-again bad. Because nothing else will compare up to it.

She gets her bearings back too late and it’s not seconds after she’s _finally_ got solid control of her legs again that they’ve already made it to the gate and it’s being cranked open. Emerson shoves her back before she can twist out from the blow and she spins around with that same animal snarl, but he lurches back with that same jump.

From behind the gate, Emerson shoots her a final smug grin. “Oh, and one last thing: careful of the silver.”

He brings his finger to mouth and blows a sharp whistle. Clarke takes a staggered step back, her head rushing at even just _hearing_ the word silver, but as she does she sees a guard that must have been waiting on the cue from outside the cage, where the crowd is. Her eyes snap to theirs and the guard dog’s face is almost impossible to see with a black ski mask and tactical gear covering up just about every feature.

There’s a spear in their hands. For a moment Clarke thinks they’re seriously going to just fling it right at her, but instead the guard throws the weapon _through_ the gaps in the bars, so it clatters down to her feet as she instinctively jumps back.

She doesn’t even need to pick it up to know what that metal is at the spear’s tip. She could recognise that exact shade and shine anywhere, had been beaten into her head since day one by her mother a thousand times over. It doesn’t surprise her that when she picks the spear up hairs prickle all up across her arm from being so close to pure silver.

A deep and bellowing roar makes her snap her head up.

There, taking slow and heavy steps towards her, is a minotaur.

“You’ve _got_ to be fucking kidding me,” Clarke hisses under her breath, quickly backing up at the dangerous proximity the actual goddamn _minotaur_ is gaining on her.

His eyes are completely black—she can’t even make the outline of a _pupil—_ and there’s another silver spear clamped surely in his giant, though _human_ shaped hands, thick and curled bull horns pushing out from the top of his head with the face of a bull glaring at her. His flesh is dark but it seems to flit between fur and skin over his whole body.

It’s worse at his bottom half, though. He heaves his way toward her on cloven hooves and an ancient rage buried deep in his eyes.

Clarke’s aware enough to know it’s not at her, but for the place and people around them. While the harpy might have been more monster than human, there’s an intelligence and depth that is obvious in his eyes that makes her know that there’s a _person_ in there, there’s someone with a name and a life and is probably just like her, really.

He no doubt believes the exact same thing she does.

They aren’t dying in here.

Clarke flips the spear in her hands, circling him with her back to the cage behind her as the crowd screams and cheers to a deafening intensity around them. “I need you to know I don’t want to do this,” Clarke says, making sure she has his eyes, “but I’ve gotta go home. I _have_ to.”

The minotaur doesn’t say anything. His eyes narrow, puffing out a furious huff of air through his nostrils before with no warning he’s opening his mouth and _roaring_ , charges towards her with the intensity that Clarke knows will crush every one of her bones if she’s caught in it.

She lunges to the side. The crowd’s cheering dwindles and swells with every burst of movement. The minotaur spins around, and he slams the bottom of the spear into the floor so violently the sand around it jumps like a ripple in water.

“Come on, then,” Clarke snarls.

They run for each other.

-

She learns fast that fighting the minotaur is _nothing_ like the harpy.

The harpy was more monster than anything, less of a person than it was an animal. The _minotaur_ , though, he’s nothing like it and it becomes apparent quick that any tricks won’t work on him. She doesn’t know how long minotaurs live for or even just how many of them there are that exist, if you look in the right places, but _this_ one must have definitely lived a handful of centuries or two. The way it fights—the way it circles her, always on the lookout for an opening, a weakness—that takes training. That takes _practice_.

She lost her spear a while ago. His is gone, scattered out on the floor too, but _his_ is at least all in one piece, which is something Clarke can’t say the same for. She’d had to sacrifice it for a swing she reacted too late for that would’ve stabbed right through her. So the spear snapped in two instead of her own bones.

Now with no weapon the minotaur lets out some bestial roar and then charges right for her. It’s only _barely_ she dives out the way of it, but she doesn’t come out unscathed. He’d clearly been waiting on that exact reaction and he swings his arm out last second.

His fist collides into her stomach. The force it sends her slamming into the ground and pain ripples through her whole abdomen like it’s a goddamn bullet that’s torn through. Clarke groans on the floor, curling into herself and spitting out a mouthful of blood that she really, _really_ hopes isn’t because he’d ruptured something inside her. Every inch of her just feels like one big bruise. The only good thing, the silver hasn’t touched her yet.

Clarke doesn’t know a lot about minotaurs, but one thing she’s certainly learnt is that he seems as equally shit scared of silver as her. Neither of them wants to even be on the same continent as the cursed metal and it means they’ve both been overly cautious with it, even on each other. Just a nick is tempting fate.

She hears it before she sees.

There’s the sound of the minotaur recovering from his charge, wrenching himself back to two legs. Each stagger of his steps is like he has boulders for feet and so when he rushes for her again, snarling and spitting the whole way Clarke jerks her head up, and her first instinct is to wildly search out for that broken spear that’s closer now, that’s lying right next to her.

It’s just seconds before he lunges down for her that Clarke snatches the spear and holds it up, _dares_ him to get on top of her.

He doesn’t.

The minotaur lurches back and only barely avoids the skim of the silver spear’s edge. He backs up, lets Clarke shakily get herself up on her elbows and drag herself back, still cradling her stomach, struggling to get her breath back even then. The minotaur is smart, though. In those seconds she takes for recovery, he lumbers backwards but snatches his spear off the ground.

The _non_ -broken one.

Shit.

This time she’s not fast enough.

She knows the exact moment happens. It’s all a blur of movement and fury, but the moment that spear finally pierces into her stomach during her attempt to get back up—the attempt that took just too long—it’s already over. Even if the minotaur stabs it in viciously and then uses it to _lift_ her upwards, slamming her back into her cage walls as high as he can; the only thing she feels is that silver burning and _burning_ out from her stomach like a wildfire that’s eating her insides.

It blinds everything. She thrashes wildly, frantically tries to grab the spear to get it out, get it _out_ , but any time her fingers touch they sting too and she has to curse, jerk her hand back. The minotaur stares up at her with nothing showing on his face. Only twists the spear in deeper and Clarke screams.

For a second, she thinks it’s over. There’s searing pain blasting out from her stomach where the spear is twisting deep in her flesh and there’s blood spilling out from her lips and choking in her lungs. Everything _hurts_ and she’s hit with the terrifying clarity that this might very well be the last thing she knows.

The cheers are only getting louder until it’s a complete wall of overwhelming sound that pounds almost rhythmically in her ribs. Clarke’s eyes frantically scan around to see them all just _grinning_ at her, utterly consumed into the violence and snapping for the creature finish her off like she doesn’t have a life or family or exists beyond their own entertainment.

A snarl rips out from her bloody teeth and Clarke’s eyes jerk back to the minotaur in front of her.

 _No_. She’s not dying here and she’s certainly not fucking dying while sadistic pieces of shit bet on how long it’ll take till the blood stops seeping out her body. When she dies, it’ll be quiet and gentle as she’s hopefully laid to rest in some cottage out in the middle nowhere, where the smell of earth and rain is in every breath into her lungs and the only audience she’ll have will be whatever face of the moon that night.

Her death will be hers and no one else’s.

There’s blackness that’s crowding in on the edges of vision and her body is getting dangerously weak now, but Clarke gasps through the flood in her lungs and grinds her teeth. Her gaze snaps up, and her arms surge up to where she can reach the top of the cage bars she’s never been able to reach before. The minotaur’s eyes widen like he _knows_ but she’s too fast.

It tears horribly through her stomach at forcing herself to stretch. The pain gets worse and the blood spills faster but she only wraps her hands around the cold metal bars and _pulls_. The minotaur is already lurching back, realising she’s getting dangerous height over him, but Clarke’s legs snap out and wrap around his head. Her feet find purchase on his horns and she violently shoves them both ways to snap his neck.

The minotaur drops. Clarke slams into the ground too. The agony shreds through her entire body, and she can goddamn _feel_ the silver infecting her blood in a never-ending fire that makes her want to thrash blindly against the floor. It’s all too much. This shitty underground hell is reduced to streaking blurs fading in and out and the shocked and bloodthirsty jeers are muffled in her eardrums.

Neither of them moves and dead silence falls all at once.

Clarke manages to roll onto her side. She groans and hisses, shakily wrapping her hands around the shaft of the spear still lodged into her stomach. When she rips it out in one vicious tug, the spectators all erupt and Clarke decides that the day she escapes this, the day she makes it out, she’s locking the doors and burning this entire thing down to bones and ashes.

She collapses onto her back and waits for the horn that should mean it’s over, but it doesn’t come. This sends a whole new wave of panic through her because Clarke knows if she doesn’t get medical attention soon, she’s probably never going to find that cottage.

A strangled, pained grunt comes from beside her. Clarke clutches desperately at her stomach and she turns her head to see the minotaur is lying flat on its back too. It’s staring at her, paralysed, and it _grunts_ again, but this time Clarke realises it’s not just a sound of pain—it’s trying to say something.

There’s a desperate longing in its black eyes and Clarke knows what it means.

The crowd are getting more violent in their desperation for more, for _blood_ and the entertainment they’d rightfully paid for, but Clarke is merciful and slow as she unsteadily gets herself onto her hands and knees. She grabs the spear, manages to drag herself closer until she’s knelt next to the minotaur.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke pants, tasting the blood in her mouth. Her eyes tear up and spill. “I’m sorry.”

She pushes the spear gently through his chest, between his ribs, and into his heart.

The minotaur’s head is still twisted in a wrong angle to the side, but its eye never leaves her and as it closes slow, she thinks there’s something like forgiveness there. Clarke sinks back onto her knees, and right as the death horn finally sounds the darkness crowds in completely until she slumps unconscious into the cold and bloodstained sand.

-

Before even opening her eyes she wishes she wasn’t awake.

Even if she’s expecting it, had been _waiting_ on it the second she picked up that spear and felt the silver singing from it, there is still nothing to prepare her. She’s known a lot of pain in her life. She’d gotten into a car crash once where the only reason she even survived was because she’d shifted from within the crushed confines.

The whole car upside down, glass shattered and metal bent all around her, blood and smoke all she could taste in her mouth. Her leg had been twisted in some horrifying angle underneath. Her head was swimming even worse in the agony, a stream of red that kept blinding her left eye because head wounds just _don’t_ fucking stop.

The space was tight and was constricting by the second that even when she’d tried to rip her leg up, to crawl out the smashed window with her hands while on her belly, it wasn’t enough. And she’d sworn to herself, had to spit the blood out her mouth to do so. Some part of it didn’t even feel real. She’d been hit out of nowhere, on some lone road intersection that _should_ have stayed lonely. There was only desert gravel around her. The night was quiet and empty. Even the crickets kept singing like they couldn’t care for nothing else.

But then her spine was stretching and grinding and her knees started turning in backwards and her leg—the one still trapped underneath all that metal—it’d snapped and twisted too, and so by the end of it, it was a wolf’s snout that was peeking out through the shattered window frame. Claws slashing out, digging into asphalt. Dragging itself forward out from under. Each pull inciting more pain than the last.

She’d thought she would never know pain worse like that. It’d cut so close to the bone, to how close she came to dying, that it wasn’t months later, till more than one season had passed till she finally got behind a wheel again. Even now, though, sometimes she can still feel the shake in her hands when someone overtakes too close. When there’s a truck waiting in traffic next to her. When the intersection is overflowing and she holds her breath the moment the light goes green.

Turns out, though, that while it had hurt like fucking _hell_ when that silver tip had first pierced through her skin, that the way it feels when she wakes up with the silver still lingering in her blood is far worse.

Because that pain is temporary. It’s a flash of agony and is gone as fast as the blade is ripped back.

But this? This is the worst kind of death to have.

A slow one.

Time passes in some blurred muddled way that hours or whole months could have passed and she’d have neither clue of which. She’s sweating profusely but her body feels like it’s freezing and boiling at the same time. Her skin has gotten pale and sickly enough she can just _hear_ her mother’s voice in her ear, from all those hours of scolding and being dragged around the hospital. Being made to learn. To _see_.

There’s a bucket next to her. The second one of the hour. It’s so bad that when Emerson comes back down— _again_ —to replace that bucket that’s full of vomit, he doesn’t even insult her anymore. He just snatches it with clear disgust, kicks another one over to her and storms out. Sometimes he kicks a couple of water bottles over to her too.

They won’t let her die. Clarke has only encountered silver once before, but they must have seen it countless times with supernaturals before her because they’re not at all worried about her state. Even if she’s pressed into the corner of her cage, trembling and feverish and _feeling_ like she’s dying, looking like she’s coughing right at death’s door, they just come back in and out like clockwork. Bored and just wanting the process over with.

And, well. That makes two of them.

In what is either possibly day three or five or six, in some brief bout of mercy, it finally eases up. If only for long enough she actually gets a handle on lucidity again. She manages to crawl herself up from where she’d curled over on the ground, so that she can instead lean up against the cage wall. The world is still a little blurry and the light that hangs from ceiling is leaving streaks when it swings. But it’s enough. Enough so she can close her eyes and breathe out slowly.

That nausea rolls in her stomach for a second, another attempt of her body to purge any remains of silver in her system. Nothing comes, though. It passes through and forgets and Clarke ends up laughing in breathless relief. The last time she’d had to go through this, she’d sworn to herself never again. That even if it’s to save another life she’s never getting even in the same _mile_ as someone fitted with silver.

Clearly that’s gone over real well.

Still, like always Clarke’s eyes drift to the side to check on Lexa. She’s still sitting there like always. But her eyes are stuck on her, are tight with more concern than Clarke ever thought she’d be worth. They’ve been like that since the moment she woke up with the silver in her.

She’s missed her, though. That same old sigh and shake of the head from whatever terrible joke comes from her mouth. Rambling and run on conversations that Lexa only half the time actively participates in, but when she does, it’s always better than she could dream, and they talk like they aren’t strangers but have known each other since the sun first woke up.

It makes something swell up beneath her rips. An ache and tug, like her heart is reaching, it’s _reaching_ right out across to her, to come home after so long.

“You want to know the easiest way to spot a werewolf?” Clarke pants, making sure she’s holding Lexa’s eyes, has her attention. “We’ll never shake your hand.”

Lexa’s worsening concern shifts. Honest curiosity flashes across her face, and Clarke only knows because she sees it how Lexa’s head almost tilts, her brow twitching.

Clarke grins like there’s nothing else she could want. She ignores the violent tremor that racks through her without warning, how her hand instinctually jerks out to the bucket. Nothing comes and so with her hand shaking the whole way she brings it back to her stomach. Cradles the healing wound. It’s been stitched and bandaged now, though she has no idea when that even happened.

“It’s an old wives tale we never really shook off, see? Back in the old days, right, back when castles were the only skyrise you could get, we had hunters always after us. You’d know,” Clarke adds, gesturing out to her and earning an amused eyebrow raise. Her grin doesn’t waver, but it softens maybe. “Half the time they were going for your kind anyway and it was more just two birds one stone.”

“But what they’d do, right,” she goes on, leaning forward now, lowering her voice like it’s some old, blood soaked secret, “in every new village they’d show up in to find some new prize to hang up on their walls, they would go round door to door introducing themselves. Polite as anything. But they would wear rings: _silver_ rings.”

In the corner of her mouth, Lexa finally smiles.

“And so they would just wait. Going up each door till finally, when they go to shake that hand, they wait for the person that flinches back.” Clarke finally falls back into the cage bars with a shrug. “We eventually caught on and we never really got over it, even if it doesn’t mean shit now. We just kept teaching it to our children and forgot to stop.”

Lexa mulls the words over. Clarke’s already smiling easier now, not needing anything else. Lexa’s the type to usually let the conversation trail off and Clarke’s gotten long used to it. It’s enough, anyway. Soon she’ll be pulled back into hell again, the silver will surge back up in her blood, but to even just have these few minutes where Lexa watches her with barely veiled amusement and interest is worth every second of it.

But then Lexa is shuffling closer, sliding right up until she’s the closest she can get to her with the bars between them. “The easiest way to spot a vampire is to look for the one who never smiles with their teeth.”

To prove it, she smiles in a way Clarke has never seen, and clear as day are the fangs that peek out. Sharp and lethal and _real_.

Clarke laughs, but what gets her most is the warmth she feels at knowing that Lexa is playing along. It’s usually a one-man ship whenever she starts anything. Lexa’s smile doesn’t leave, though, and this feels different to anything they’ve done before, like something is shifting between them and this is the final warning sign, the end of the end.

It’s the moment that Clarke realises that she actually cares a dangerous amount of what Lexa thinks. Which is no way an easy thing to achieve with her, because the list of people that she legitimately listens to and cares to hear for starts and ends with herself. But Lexa is more than that. Far more than anything she’s had, or _wanted_.

And she truly realises that if her and Lexa had met out of this place, somewhere like a bar or maybe even out in the woods, then they’d probably get on with a familiarity that doesn’t fit with strangers. It feels cruel and inevitable that of course, of _course_ this is where it happens, this is where she finds it.

Where else would it happen for someone like her, really.

-

The first time she crossed with silver she was nineteen.

It was also the first time she killed someone.

It starts with a woman bursting through the doors of the diner she’s wiping tables and serving coffee at. She’s been here for more than a few months now so maybe it’s unavoidable that of course something happens that forces her to move. Even growing up it’d been like that, though that was more when she was younger, and her mother kept bouncing between hospitals. Because you’ve always got to be one step ahead, catch the threat long before it shows its face.

It was only really around middle school that they finally found someplace that they could dig their claws in enough to make a real home. Somewhere that the hospital Abby could work in didn’t have much suspicion about her or the days she can’t come in because they’re beyond relieved just to _have_ someone qualified. A town where there’s no rumours of hunters that like to pass through and that a rare few previous werewolves have passed through either, so it’s easier to keep your head down.

So when some dark haired woman stumbles in through the diner’s doors, eyes wildly flicking about and breathing so fast it’s a wonder her lungs haven’t given out, Clarke is less surprised than she should have been.

Or she _would_ have been. But as Clarke decides to cautiously approach because it’s only her and one other guy working the front—he hasn’t even glanced up, far too occupied with the magazine he’s reading—the woman’s eyes snapped to her and right as she clearly readies herself to bolt, they freeze at the exact same time.

It’s her scent that does it. Clarke’s eyes go wide, because when she takes another sniff just to be _sure,_ the woman does the same thing, too. It’s _weird_ , though, because the scent of what she is feels familiar to what she is herself, but different. Like species adjacent. Like two sides of the same coin.

And that’s when it hits what she was struggling to identify, what that scent is.

Feline.

Clarke is blatantly staring at her, reeling from the first werecat she’s ever met, but right as an excited grin starts spreading the woman has burst forward and grabbed the front of her shirt, hisses to her, “Someone is after me, hide me, _please_.”

“ _What_?”

A car engine rumbles from outside and the woman’s head snaps around. Her nostrils flare, the pupils in her eyes going wide as they frantically scan the door to the windows, looking for whatever it is that she’s running from. Her heart is pounding so violently it’s almost louder than Clarke’s own.

It’s a fear that Clarke has seen and felt countless times before. Some things are universal.

“Shit, fuck, okay just—” Clarke grabs her wrist and starts dragging her towards the back. The woman doesn’t resist, but her eyes are still trapped on behind, watching the door. “Hey Seth,” she calls out, to the kid that’s only a year younger than her, still sitting behind the counter and _still_ yet to glance up. “Can you handle on your own for a sec? I’ve got a family thing I need to handle.”

Seth just waves a bored hand, flips to the next page of his magazine. The apocalypse could have erupted outside and he’d still keep reading.

“Family?” the werecat says lowly to her, finally ripping her eyes from the door.

Clarke shrugs. “We’re probably like cousins in some way, right?”

The werecat glares. She still follows after though, lets Clarke lead her through the kitchen and to the storage room in the back. Clarke is sure to lock the door behind them and only then does her heart start slowing down again.

She glances back to the werecat. There’s still something frantic about her gaze, but she seems at least a little calmer now that they’re hidden back somewhere, only shelves of food and supplies around them. It makes Clarke pause, as an idea hits as she eyes the racks of goods. “Wait here, alright?”

The werecat frowns at her but Clarke is already moving.

It doesn’t take long to find a few water bottles, a couple packets of chips. It’s far from grand but it’s the closest and best she can get to a peace offering. Plus, well, you can rarely go wrong with it anyway. If the girl is on the run, some food can’t hurt.

Clarke steps out from the shelves and hands the collection over to her. At first the werecat stares at her, then at the offering, eyes narrowed and clearly full of distrust. Eventually, after Clarke’s expectant eyebrow raise, she gingerly reaches out and takes it.

“Why?” the werecat says, once she realises there’s nothing malicious in the act.

Clarke just gives her a confused smile. “That’s what we’re meant to do for each other, isn’t it?”

The werecat doesn’t answer, only keeps staring at her.

But then Clarke is gently nudging her aside and gesturing for her to follow after. She unlocks the door that’s shoved right at the back, pushes it open and instinctively pulls in a deep breath in as it swings to reveal the outside. It’s a cooler day than usual and the air tastes fresh and cold in her lungs.

“Alright, it’s clear. Who are you running from? Are they coming here?”

“A hunter.”

“Our sort?” Clarke checks, looking back to her. The werecat nods. “Shit. Okay.”

It takes less than a second for her to decide what she has to do.

“You got a ride out?” Clarke asks. The werecat hesitates and she takes that as an answer. Sighing, Clarke is already reaching for the notepad she has in her back pocket to take customer orders. “Right. I’m going to give you where I’m staying. I’ll finish up here, and I’ll meet you there. I’ll drop you where you want once we’re out.”

She says this while she hurriedly scribbles down her address. It’s near the outskirts of town, naturally, backed right near into the woods. Ideally she’d clear off without even bothering to stop by the trailer and pick up her very limited collection of personal belongings, but she can give it a couple extra hours to get the werecat out.

Clarke rips the paper off, puts it in the werecat’s hands and starts shuffling her through the door. The werecat still looks confused at the turn of events, staring down at the address and supplies in her hands while frowning deeply, but before she’s pushed fully out Clarke can’t resist the question.

“Wait,” Clarke says, and the werecat glances up to her suspiciously. “Just, before you leave, what’s your name? So I know what to watch out for.”

The excitements leaks into her voice even as she tries to hide it. The werecat must notice, but instead of looking peeved this time she looks a little amused. It’s not really Clarke’s fault. She’s heard _stories_ of werecats before and her mother said she’d known one, back in the day, but she’d never thought she would ever _actually_ meet one herself. Werewolves roam and run, sure, but they’re also destined to stick together. It’s written in their blood. They’re easy to find that way.

Werecats, though. They’re _rare_ because they walk alone. They’ve got a hearing that even outrivals werewolves. She’s got no doubt they’re probably the bane of hunters because of that, because by the time hunters catch on to what they are, to who exactly just walked by them, the werecat’s already gone—had already heard the stutter in their chest. The trip of their feet, rustle of fabric.

“I’m Clarke, if that helps.”

The werecat stares, before finally she sighs. “Raven.”

Clarke’s brow rises. “You’re a were _cat_ named after a bird?”

“Your parents wanted a son, did they?” Raven snarks back, glaring.

Clarke shrugs, the grin not leaving her face.

Raven pushes it another second before finally she only secures her grip on the supplies in her hands and slinks out the back like she was never here. Clarke watches her, the corner of mouth ticking up at finding what she’d been hoping to find—that the way Raven moves makes barely a sound. Feline grace, alright. She looks young enough that she’s probably got all nine lives left.

But then, if werecats _are_ in any way related to werewolves, then maybe not. She doesn’t know how long their kind usually last. Maybe she’s nervous like Clarke too. Maybe she counts her days the exact same way Clarke does.

She closes the door and shoves her notebook back into her pocket. Under her breath, she mutters at herself to remember to call her mother before this is over. When she leaves the storage room, though, heading back into the front she almost runs right into Seth who’s all of a sudden in front of her.

“The hell you doing, man?” Clarke frowns at him. He’d clearly been about to sneak off into the back too. Which is weird, because there is a very, very short list of things capable of tearing him away from his magazine.

Seth grimaces, shooting a look toward the front. “Weird guy just walked in, he creeps me out.”

Clarke’s eye jerk to where Seth gestures with his hand. The hairs prickle up her neck at seeing the man that’s sitting on a stool, a long and unkempt brown coat hunched over his shoulders and hanging down to his heels. He’s lighting a cigarette in his hands, covering the flame and even from here, Clarke can see the deep ragged scar that spans down the web of his thumb and disappears long into his wrist up his coat.

He puts his lighter inside his inner coat pocket, breathes deep and leans back. His eyes settle on her, but Clarke’s immediately draw to his throat, to the necklace that’s hanging from it.

Animal teeth. Five of them, some of them longer than the others. Older, yellower. A human would call it a novelty, some knickknack gotten off some pop-up market. A hunter would call it trophies. A werewolf would call it family.

He stares right at her, smiles while smoke drifts up through his lips.

-

The hunter asks for some coffee. Clarke nods from where she’s now just in front him, the counter the only thing between them. He’s close enough that she can just _smell_ the violence off him. She can feel her pulse in her hands but still, summoning every ounce of nonchalance she has, she only pulls out a clean cup, reaches for the pot.

His eyes don’t ever move off her. It sets off just about every warning bell she possesses. He’s got those eyes that you just _know_ aren’t right, lack what they should have. Evil can be buried but it cannot be forgotten. As deep as it can go, there’s always _something_ in you that can sense it. It’s pulling everything she has not to react to it.

She just has to keep him talking. Long enough he stays, loses Raven’s trail. That’s all.

“You want sugar with it?” Clarke asks, instead of who the names are that hang around his neck.

He shakes his head and she hands it over. She prays that he can’t see the shake in her fingers.

“Hm.” He sips at it, leaning back. The cigarette’s been long put out now. “You been here long?”

Clarke glances over her shoulder to Seth. He’s still hiding back and unfortunately, she doubts the kid will be coming to her aid anytime soon. It’s so bad he’d even _left_ his magazine right there on his chair. She wants to be pissed but can’t find the will. It’s exactly what he should have done, really.

“Been a bit,” Clarke says, wiping down the counter that’s already clean just so she doesn’t have to look at him. “Why you ask?”

He takes another sip. “Thinking about moving someplace new. I’ve been talking around, trying to get a feel for the place.”

Clarke laughs sardonically. “Yeah? You wanna move _here_? The backend of nowhere?”

She looks up, sees him just watching her now. That cold predatory glint in his eyes makes goosebumps prickle up her arms. “What’s it like around here?” he asks, not taking the bait.

Clarke shrugs. “It’s nothing, man. Most exciting thing we get is bigfoot sightings. Maria _swears_ she saw it last year and won’t shut up about it. No one’s got the heart to tell her it was just some kid streaking near her house at night on a dare. He’d twisted his ankle, though, and screamed murder. And she’d just seen a shadow moving and pained screaming and thought: _oh god,_ _bigfoot_.”

She glances up with a smile for this, but the hunter doesn’t laugh.

“That usual round here?” he says, not even blinking. “Strange sightings?”

“Nothing strange about it,” Clarke shrugs off. “I told you, it was just a prank.”

He keeps staring at her. His coffee has been sitting untouched for a couple minutes now. “But you’ve never seen anything strange, too, have you?”

“I saw a spider eat a bird once. Was absolutely insane, horror movie shit. The thing was like ten inches long, can you imagine? I reckon the thing crawled right up from hell.” Clarke shudders. “I still get nightmares about it.”

Something changes in the hunter’s demeanour. His eyes narrow, for just a second, and he leans forward a little closer, keeping one arm still laid across the counter while the other now drifts down to his side.

“You’ve really not noticed anything?”

Her heart pounds so hard her chest burns.

Clarke meets his stare. She stops cleaning what’s already cleaned, instead throws the cloth over her shoulder. So her hands are free. “Should I have noticed something?”

The edge of his mouth tilts up. “It’s just interesting, I find. I’ve been asking people around and all of them had stories. Been some howling going around that’s been making people nervous. John’s dog used to run off just about every day, but now it’s staying inside and he just can’t figure why. I even talked to some of the men that like to go hunting the woods sometimes, and all of them were complaining about the lack of game.”

“And Maria,” he goes on, his voice casual as anything while his eyes are boring right into hers, are _waiting,_ “she said she actually talked to the kids. That one of them had come forward and admitted. But, he’d said he’d been _running_ from something.”

On the outside, she doesn’t show any reaction apart from a disinterested nod, acting like sure, this is all totally relevant, and she’s definitely not thinking about how badly she just wants her shift to be over and to go home into her bed. She even sighs, glancing around the diner like in some vain hope some cause will come up that’ll give her an excuse to pull away.

But that’s not why she looks. Internally, her mind is flashing back to the night she’d been slinking around the woods, ears forward and nose twitching on the hope for something filling. She’d smelt food, _human_ food. And it’d been so late, pushing on two in the morning, and she was so _hungry_ and desperate that she’d decided to risk it and snuck into the camp, keeping low and hunched on four legs.

The camp had been empty of people. She’d taken that as a victory, as that rare smile from the gods. She had gone in, eaten up anything she could find in open bags and grills. But when she’d heard shouting, excited jeers from far off, she’d bolted.

The boy had seen her flash of shadow in the dark as she split past and he’d been so shocked he had tripped over his feet, twisted his ankle on the way down.

She shouldn’t have said anything to the hunter. She’d just been trying to buy time, to mention stories to keep his mind off and now she’s scanning the room, checking for witnesses. Counting the amount of steps to the door.

The hunter leans back. “I just find it funny, is all. That you haven’t seen anything.”

Under the counter, her hands start spreading out slow. She holds his eyes, never looking away as claws start to push out. As her insides burn.

And then he just grins, and gets up. Wordlessly, he pulls out his wallet, slaps down a bill and slides off his stool, walks out the door. His coffee remains unfinished. Clarke glances down at the money. He’d overpaid.

She stuffs it in her pocket.

-

It’s two hours later before she gets out.

She wants to be sure he’s gone before stepping outside. It’s too much to risk that he might follow her, especially after giving her address to Raven, so the moment she finally steps out first she sniffs the air around her, searching out for his scent. He’s gone, though. Hasn’t been here for a while.

She leaves her shift an hour before she should have and her apron stays sitting on the counter. It’s not like she’s needs it anymore.

Still, she can’t help but check over her shoulder as she unlocks her car and steps in. Sunset will be here soon. The sky is already tiring out, scattered clouds stretching thin like they’re seconds from wisping out entirely with the fading sun bleeding over them all. It’s the sort of sight that’d be perfect to paint and makes her fingers twitch.

Before she even puts her key in the ignition she pulls out her phone, puts in her mother’s number by heart. She hasn’t seen her in months, they’ve barely spoken and the few words they _have_ shared have been begging’s and arguments to come home. It doesn’t tend to end well.

But there are some things that werewolves have a responsibility to do, no matter what. It’s about survival. It’s about family.

Her mother picks up and Clarke is speaking before Abby can even get a greeting out.

“There’s a hunter moving through the town I’m in. You need to call anyone who might be near and let them know.”

Abby doesn’t say anything. Clarke hears a sharp intake of breath, the creak in the plastic from her fingers tightening around the phone too hard. “You’re sure?”

Clarke huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I’m _sure_. He’s killed at least five of us. Had the necklace and all.”

Abby curses under her breath. Clarke shoves the key in, lets the engine rev up. “Okay I’ll—I’ll get word out. I think your uncle Noah is meant to be somewhere near you. I’ll call him first.”

Clarke hisses through her teeth. Noah is the youngest of the litter, the little brother that’s the only sibling her mother has left. He’d also been the first one to notice how Clarke’s hands have always ached to have a pencil in them. It’d wrecked them all if he was the next to be killed.

“Alright,” Clarke sighs. “I’ll keep an ear out for him.”

There’s a lull in the call. Worse, she knows what it’s for. What’s coming.

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” Abby says, her voice lower now.

Clarke smiles sadly and runs her hands over the wheel. “Aren’t I always?”

Abby breathes out shaky. It’s the same lie that’s Clarke been saying since she learnt to speak. Abby will never call her out for it though, because the moment she does is the moment it becomes real. “I love you,” her mother says instead.

Clarke’s smile wipes off and she stares at her hands.

The setting sun is glinting off her dashboard. It’s warm on her fingers. She has to swallow what’s trying to claw up her throat, press and burn behind her ribs. “Me too,” she pushes out, and hangs up.

It takes another minute or two before she finally gets the car moving. For a moment she can only sit there, exhaling slow and pressing her forehead into the wheel. It’s the sort of mental image that makes her laugh. If a hunter ever saw her like that, they might just resign their so-called duty on the spot, never pack silver into a chamber again.

Werewolves might be abominations to nature, sure. A defiant spit into the face of god. But if anyone saw one like this, they’d see a person, simple as that.

They’d see some kid just wishing she was home.

-

Even before she pulls up, she already knows something is wrong.

Maybe it’s some preternatural instinct. Maybe it’s something deeper and more human than that, buried in the ancient groves inside her bones, but _whatever_ the cause, when Clarke slowly rolls in to the usual spot there’s something cold creeping up spine that has her hands tensing around the wheel.

She pushes the door open and steps out. There’s meant to be some game on tonight that means the park is left looking like a ghost town. Her eyes rapidly scan the space around her, trying to find the reason why her entire body is strung tight with nervous tension and has her heart beating too fast and scared. Nothing seems out of place at first. Her whole two of three shirts she owns are swaying in the gentle breeze from where they’re hung up on a line; the door to the trailer doesn’t seem to be busted; none of the windows are smashed out. It looks how it always looks.

Except as Clarke creeps her way forward, there’s a scent that cuts across the breeze. Her head snaps up, jerking to the entrance to the woods that stretches out behind and off to the side of her, and _that’s_ when she finally clocks what had been setting off every alarm.

Pounding steps. Closing in, gainer more and more speed by the second. The smell of blood and fear getting worse with it, and she backs up, eyes glued to where the sounds are coming from and searching out for an escape. It’s not seconds later that a real, honest panther—a goddamn motherfucking _panther_ —bursts out from the trees and snarling out its mouth in all its terrifying glory.

But it’s a _pained_ snarling. It’s not to intimidate, more just the way to express how fucking shit the situation you’re in is, the furious _fuck you_ to the world that doesn’t care like it should. It’s a human sound, and right as Clarke’s eyes widen because as the panther makes that sound, its back left leg dragging through the dirt, its yellow eyes jerk to hers and it freezes.

“Raven?” Clarke whispers, beyond confused and more than a little star struck at the werecat before her.

She doesn’t expect it when Raven lunges forward and takes her into the ground.

Instinctively, Clarke scrambles to roll out from under her, fire immediately lighting her blood as adrenaline and the wolf floods through her, but Raven doesn’t go for her exposed throat like Clarke had expected. Instead she rolls off her, but keeps her on the ground, bites carefully into her shoulder and pierces her stomach just enough with her claws she’s able to yank Clarke into cover behind the bins she’d forgotten to take out.

Before Clarke can get out a what in the ever-loving _fuck_ is going on, Raven is on top of her again and baring her teeth. There’s no growl though, and even with yellow cat eyes the fear and the pleading is obvious in them. Clarke frowns, her attempts to throw Raven off slowing in her confusion.

The answer reveals itself in the approaching of the hunter. Raven’s ear flicks because she hears him first; Clarke goes dead silent because she smells him first. It makes her heart stop short in her chest and suddenly she understands what Raven is trying to get across, why she’d dragged her down.

The hunter doesn’t know about Clarke. Not yet. He doesn’t know she’s here. Raven wanted to keep it that way. She’d wrenched her out of sight, tried to get her to keep quiet.

“Here kitty, kitty,” the hunter calls out, and the grin is audible in his voice. “You don’t have to make this harder than it has to do be, just come out, save us both the time…”

Raven is still hunched over her, but that massive and lithe panther’s body is shaking and Clarke realises quick it’s because of whatever’s happened to her back leg. She makes that snarl again, but it comes out choked, and Clarke’s fledging words die in her throat when that shaking turns violent without warning.

The panther starts shrinking. The fur, not as long as Clarke would expect for Raven’s natural counterpart, starts pulling in in a way that is deeply familiar. Her jaw opens wide like in silent scream, long and deadly teeth hanging just inches above Clarke’s nose and making her decidedly very goddamn nervous. But then there’s that horrible sound of grinding bones and organs being pushed and shoved until in just under a minute later, it’s Raven again, looking exactly how she’d last seen her.

Apart from the lack of clothes now. Obviously. And the way she groans through gritted teeth, uselessly reaching back for her leg, where blood is now streaming down the naked skin of her outer thigh, where a bullet is lodged deep in the muscle.

A gunshot goes off above them. It’s clearly not directed at them though, as it had been, quite literally, a shot in the dark. The sun’s just about gone now. Dusk is nipping at their heels and soon there’ll have no daylight to go off. The sound jerks her back into the present, and Clarke grabs Raven’s shoulders, pushes her up so she’s sitting and is instead leaning against the back of the bins where the hunter still hasn’t seen them yet.

“What happened?” Clarke snaps, rushing to rip her jacket off and throws it over Raven’s front in some reflex honed after growing up in a family of werewolves. The sight of a nude stranger doesn’t even faze her at this point.

“Fucker found me,” Raven snarls. “The fuck else do you think?”

She pushes desperately against the wound at her leg, but she seems more pissed than actually worried about the injury. The fact that she isn’t incoherent in her pain and is thrashing on the ground tells her it’s not silver. Small mercies.

Another shot rings off and they both reflexively duck their heads.

“Jesus,” Clarke hisses. The hunter starts yelling out again, goading Raven to come out and _finish this_. “You led him here, does he know about me?”

Raven shakes her head, a sparkling layer of perspiration that glows on her skin in the dying sunlight. “I was coming here when he found me. I shifted and ran the rest of the way here. I didn’t know—” she groans again, bites her lip to muffle the sound. “Didn’t know when you were coming. Thought you’d left already. Saved yourself.”

“I appreciate the faith,” Clarke mutters, her heart pounding so fast it thrums in her ears. Raven glares at her for the remark but says nothing. “So he thinks you were just running anywhere? He doesn’t think I’m around here?”

Raven shakes her head again.

Clarke sinks back into the bin, her mind racing trying to figure out what to do. He doesn’t know about her. He’s only expecting one of them. Raven’s injured, werecat or not, there’s no way she can take him on head on when she can barely stand on one leg. No. It’s too dangerous.

For a second, her eyes flick out to where her car is still sitting fifty metres off. She could be a coward and run for it. Chances are she’ll make the distance and be able to speed off relatively scott free. She’d have to carry the guilt and death on her conscience, sure, but she’d be _alive_.

Clarke discards the idea as soon as it forms.

Her father would stay and fight and she will too.

“I’ve got a plan,” Clarke whispers. She shifts so she’s on her feet, careful to keep her head down so the hunter doesn’t see. Raven glances to her, nods hurriedly. “You distract him, bring him out and I’ll go round, get him from behind.”

Raven stares incredulously at her. “And just how _exactly_ am I meant to distract him?”

Clarke has already turned her head away, eyes the gap under the trailer next to her. “Figure something out. Wave a hand, yell something, I don’t know. Just get his attention away, alright?”

Raven swears to herself. Then to Clarke. Then to the whole situation. _Then_ once more for good measure, because you can never be too careful.

“You ready?”

“Fuck you,” Raven spits. Still, she nods. Clarke can’t help but to shoot her an amused look. She’s starting to quite like her oddly enough.

Closing her eyes and forcing a steadying breath Raven takes that jacket that’d been laid over her, angrily shoves it through her arms properly, and _stands up_ despite her very much injured leg.

“Hey dick face! You fuck your mother with that mouth?”

A shot rips through the air and Raven barely ducks it in time. A rifle muzzle flashes out between the trees, and Clarke watches it through the minuscule gap in the bins. Raven curses as she crouches behind cover again, starts pulling the jacket off. She shoots Clarke a look.

“Move when I throw.”

Clarke nods.

The adrenaline is pounding so violently within her she almost can’t hear anything else over the rush of blood in her ears. When Raven slings the jacket out so it goes flying through the air, it gets shredded by the bullet that cracks the second there’s the flash of movement. Clarke scrambles under the trailer and crawls under. Raven starts yelling again behind her, and the hunter shouts some profanities back, his figure looming closer now, pushing right at the last tree before it clears to grass.

When Clarke ends up on the other side of the trailer, quietly and carefully heaving herself out from the support and shaking the dirt and cobwebs out her hair, the sun’s so low the shadows spread out long and harsh across the ground. She eyes the ground from under, keeping her back to the wall as she anxiously watches his looming, approaching shadow.

Another gunshot goes off. More swearing from both sides. Clarke silently pulls her shirt over her head, unhooks her bra. Already, claws push out from her hands, the blue in her eyes being overridden with murky yellow, her gums swelling and teeth becoming too big for her mouth. She shoves her pants off, and it’s so natural by the now that it’s less than a minute later that when she falls onto hands and knees, it’s seconds later that her bones are done crunching and grinding and she becomes all that the horror stories says she is.

She prowls right to the edge of the trailer, ducking down and glancing under to see where the hunter has moved. He’s actually drifted into the open now, and Clarke realises why with a rush of adrenaline. Even if she’d held in as much as she could from the shift, trying to be as quiet as possible, when the only the sounds around were crickets and the wind then of _course_ he heard it.

He thinks it was Raven, though. He thinks he’s got an advantage, has crept his way forward because he’s got those precious, precious few seconds of the in-between where she’ll be vulnerable. Her lip peels back in anticipation, strings of saliva slipping from her jaws and trailing over the grass. She inches forward, breathes deep and she can just _taste_ it. His sweat, his excitement. The frantic race of his pulse.

It happens so fast that she barely registers the sequence of events.

She sees him cock back his gun, just a few paces off from the bins now as he approaches and lines up the shot. Clarke rounds the trailer and creeps up behind him. In a blink, she’s burst the space between them and her teeth have flashed out with a snarl. He curses, slamming into the ground, but it’s over before he can do anything. She’d aimed for his neck and she didn’t miss.

He’s screaming and thrashing beneath her. She growls savagely, the taste of his blood flooding her mouth as she shakes her head viciously at his neck till she feels his spine crush under her jaws.

The moment she does something _burning_ stabs into her side.

Clarke rips back, howling and _howling_ at the blinding pain that feels like its melting her very muscle and bone, and she can even _smell_ it, the singe of fur, the horrible stench of burnt flesh. She ends up stumbling in circles, trying to bite at where the pain is coming from. It’s a switchblade—because of _course_ it is—but it’s like nothing Clarke has felt, was made in mind for people exactly like her.

Her leg gives out. She whimpers, whining and struggling to get her teeth on the handle of the knife, to rip it out and make it stop, make it _stop_ , make it—

“ _Hey_. Will you stop fucking moving you dumb mongrel, Jesus,” Raven snaps. Clarke didn’t see her reveal herself from the bins or come over but she doesn’t fucking _care_. The pain is so all-encompassing it’s making her forget she was ever human at all, but when Raven tries to approach into her space and to grab the knife herself, when Clarke’s teeth snap at her hands and she snarls like she’ll goddamn kill her too, Raven just snarls right back.

Clarke lunges for her. But Raven must have been waiting on it, because without blinking she jerks to the side the moment she does, and instead her hand has surged out and in the same second has wrapped around the handle of the switchblade.

She rips it out. It _hurts_ and violent spasms wrack through her immediately, but the relief is instant. Clarke stumbles back, panting and whining, but alive. _Alive_. Slowly, her gaze shifts up to meet Raven’s. The werecat smiles tiredly at her. It wipes off when Clarke’s stare drops and settles on the body at her feet.

The dead body. The body of the man she’d killed. That she’d _killed_.

“You had to,” Raven says.

If she could, she would have laughed. That hopeless one that dies midway in your throat. They always have to, don’t they? That’s how it always goes. It’s how they let themselves sleep at night. The one lie that’s lived through every generation of anyone.

Her mouth tastes like iron. Her muzzle is warm and drenched in blood. Even with the pain still tearing into at her from her hip, she manages to limp her way forward to the body. His throat is a mess. His unseeing eyes are still open, still stuck in their fear.

By the time she’s shifted back until she has fingers and hands again, she’s sobbing. It’s too early and far too quick for the shift back, when her body had _barely_ set itself into its new form, and her nose and ears bleed profusely because of it. She probably would have bled from her eyes too, but she’s crying so hard that maybe it just gets lost along the way.

Raven kneels down next to her, holds her through it with that sort of ease that requires experience.

Some things are universal.

-

They don’t bury him. Don’t even really _need_ to.

There’s no doubt that an animal is what killed him. Even the shittiest cop in the world could deduce that no human could do what had been done. So they’d just lugged him over their backs—taking turns hauling the weight between both their injuries—carrying him out the furthest as they could into the woods. It’s an old and buried memory, this, but the thing that’ll always stick out is that feeling of the cold night air on her skin. The pulse of pain with every step. The smell of decaying leaves. Unsoiled earth. Blood, coiling in her nose.

When they get back, _both_ of their injuries become too much to ignore. Clarke decides that tomorrow they’ll leave. They’ll give it a night of sleep, then push out in the morning, never step foot here again.

In reality it is a week later before they end up skipping town.

Because that morning is when the silver that’s still lingering it blood does its age-old dance. Raven ends up staying with her through it and clearly hating every second but she can’t really do much about it. She’s got a life debt to her now, and it’s hard to forget something like that. When it’s finally over and it’s finally, _finally_ all rid from her system after days of fever and purging, she’s still so weak that Raven ends up driving. Clarke just sits in the passenger seat, eyes closed and breathing slowly, internally chanting don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t _fucking_ throw up.

She does, of course. Only once though. She manages to catch it in time that Raven pulls over and Clarke can shove open the door. When they stop over after two days of driving to some place that’s the furthest north that she’s ever been, the only goodbye Raven gives is when they stand out together just outside the car.

“Your leg will be okay?” Clarke says, because for some reason she can’t get the right words out. To end whatever this is.

Raven grimaces, but still, she nods. “I’ll be fine.” They stare at each other, till finally she just gives her a tired smile. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

And with that she walks off into the field.

Clarke hasn’t seen her since. She assumed that’s how most things with werecats go.

For the first time in almost a year, Clarke comes back home after that. It’s the one thing she can’t outrun. That not even werewolves can. Her mother opens the door before she can even raise her hand to knock, and it takes just a second of them standing there, with Abby’s eyes scanning over with an almost desperate intensity before finally her shoulders go slack, and she steps forward.

She pulls Clarke into an embrace without even having to say anything.

“You’re home,” Abby whispers into her hair, like already she knows somehow, knows exactly why Clarke is here and why she is fisting the back of her shirt and struggling not to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says back, her voice muffled into her mother’s shirt.

Abby doesn’t anything, just holds her tighter.

Because werewolves always are.

-

Clarke is quiet.

Lexa is not used to this. There’s a certain routine now that Lexa has come to expect. The morning comes with Clarke cursing off at its existence like if it ever held a physical being it would be the first thing on her kill list. Lexa does not require sleep, but when Clarke does she allows herself the rare offer of quiet to meditate. It is difficult to meditate when there is an almost constant source of sound in her ear, and so as such the opportunity is only granted when Clarke is unconscious.

This is what she expects. The morning is almost the same. Clarke wakes and it like always is followed with a lengthy rant with an increasingly creative string of curses thrown in, but the moment Clarke is fully aware and has dragged herself out of her sleepy haze, she immediately shuts up.

Considering what Lexa has learnt of Clarke over the past month, she was quite convinced that Clarke was absolutely incapable of this. She almost writes it off, it’s strange but it’s not _strange_ , but as the morning leans into the afternoon Clarke still hasn’t a said word.

Not _anything_.

And Lexa doesn’t know when it happened. But somewhere along the nothing Clarke’s idle chatter had become something known and almost comforting, and now with the sudden absence of it there’s a sinking feeling her gut, an old and ancient dread that Lexa has known for almost all of her eternal life.

It is not something Lexa is used to, but she glances out the corner of her eye to Clarke who is sitting back up against the cage bars, her finger tapping her thigh in a constant motion that hasn’t stopped since she woke up. Before, two guards had come in and carelessly throw them their rations, yet Clarke has barely spared the oddly well-prepared meal a glance.

“Is something wrong, Clarke?”

Clarke freezes. She blinks, then looks at her like she’s never seen her before. “Have you somehow conveniently forgotten just where we are?”

Lexa sighs through her nose. “You haven’t said anything all morning,” she tries again. Clarke sits up this time, a wry smile spreading on her lips.

“I thought you hated my talking.”

“I never said I did.”

“No,” Clarke allows, though she still looks highly amused, “but you _do_ scowl and glare like you’ve been wronged in a past life.”

“And what if I _was_ wronged?”

“Then I imagine you’ve already gotten your revenge and you’re just holding on to it out of spite.”

Lexa rolls her eyes.

Silence stretches between them. Clarke’s smile slips off and she goes back to furiously tapping her thigh, and it’s then Lexa realises something is seriously wrong.

“Do you have a fight today?”

She doesn’t mean for there to be fear in her voice. Lexa doesn’t know when she started to care about the werewolf caged next to her.

Clarke smiles like she just told a joke. “Not quite,” she murmurs.

Lexa frowns. She slumps back, about to attempt another questioning when Clarke has already interrupted.

“How many have been in here before me?”

Lexa stills. Clarke finally tears her eyes off from where she’d been staring out at nothing. Lexa has grown used to the way Clarke wears her heart on her sleeve, but in this moment her expression remains carefully blank. There’s an uneasy feeling in Lexa’s chest that reminds her of the lead up into wars. The dreading, the anticipation, the possibility. The absolute denial of what is already in motion.

Clarke is staring at her, a brow arched high.

“Many,” Lexa says quietly.

Clarke’s expression falters. “And how many were my kind?”

Lexa knows, then.

Clarke swallows and Lexa doesn’t miss how her eyes are wet now. “They all died, didn’t they? When the moon comes. It’s never the fights that kill them, is it?”

Lexa doesn’t answer.

-

“I can’t die here. I won’t _die_ here.”

Clarke is up pacing in her cage, but Lexa remains seated in her own.

“I can’t—this is—I can’t, I fucking _can’t_. This can’t fucking be how it ends,” Clarke spits, and there’s enough furious venom in her face Lexa glances up. Clarke is like a hurricane trapped under bone and flesh and she _snarls_ , that wild, feral one that only werewolves can achieve. It’s the type of sound that makes you think only of death. If you were out alone in the woods and it was _that_ sound that echoed out amongst the trees, well, you might as well lie yourself in your grave and save yourself the time.

It doesn’t really surprise Lexa when the sound is immediately followed by Clarke kicking against the cage. It rings out with a metallic _clang_ and Lexa winces, but this only seems to worsen Clarke’s desperation. The metal barely shows any signs of giving, not like it ever would, and Clarke only attempts a few more useless blows until she turns for behind.

Her eyes snap onto the wall behind the cage. She bursts forward, then pummels her fist into a wall that erupts into a cloud of dust, yet only reveals a few measly pathetic cracks. Clarke’s eyes flash yellow and she’s snarling out through exposed teeth, but Lexa bursts to her feet because _any_ more sound and the men will come and Clarke will be lucky to escape with some burns at best.

“Clarke,” Lexa hisses, pressing her face against the bars and wrapping her hands tight around the metal.

Clarke doesn’t listen and throws another useless hit into the wall. All it achieves is blooding her fist.

“Stop it, what good do you think this will do?” Lexa snarls.

“What else is there!” Clarke snaps. She’s seething like a bomb and lunges forward, their faces as close as they can get with the metal between them. “I can’t fucking die here, I _can’t_.”

“And what help do you think breaking your hand will be?”

Clarke shoves at the bars. “I can get through, I can—I can find fucking— _something_ a, a window or a break or a—”

“We’re _underground_ ,” Lexa stresses. Her eyes desperately flick between Clarke’s own. “There’s nothing, Clarke. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing.”

Clarke steps back. The fury leaves her all in a blink, and in the next second she’s sunk back onto the floor. Lexa’s heart has not lived in centuries, but in this moment she can feel it as it bleeds out onto her feet. Slowly, she sits down too, and at seeing how Clarke still hasn’t turned to face her Lexa swallows but she does the same.

They sit with their backs opposite to each other. Almost touching, if it wasn’t for the metal.

“Have you seen it happen?”

Lexa closes her eyes and breathes out slow. “Yes.”

It is not a kind death. It is hopeless and horrible and something that no matter how distant Lexa keeps herself, it will always pull at her, at _anyone_. Even when the guards come in, when it begins, alerted and rushing in at the frantic thrashing and screaming, even _they_ can’t bear to watch. Only share glances and shake their heads and run like the pathetic cowards they are, willing to let the entirely preventable death proceed but not watch.

“Did it look like it hurt?”

It is _not_ a kind fucking death. Lexa is silent. It only seems to give her away.

“Sorry,” Clarke says, and she laughs like she’s about to die. “Stupid question, isn’t it?”

It is not kind.

But Clarke is, and that is where the problem lies.

-

Clarke gets worse.

It starts only as a mindlessly tapping against her leg. She sits and doesn’t speak a word. Lexa is trying her best to come across as unaffected, but her eyes keep routinely flicking out to her fellow prisoner, watching as now Clarke’s foot starts tapping too. With every hour that passes, it speeds up just a little faster.

Clarke repeatedly asks how long it is until sundown and Lexa dutifully answers. She has lived too long to not have developed an acute sense of where the sun resides, even if she’s trapped deep underground and hasn’t touched a watch since they were invented.

As it leans into the late afternoon, just barely a couple hours off sundown, Clarke paces again. Her breathing is considerably faster and her eyes are constantly scanning the space around them for the escape Lexa knows not to be there. Clarke seems to know this, but desperation tends to leave little room for logic.

Lexa clenches her fist. This shouldn’t matter. She has always taken great care to leave herself unattached when living in a place like this. Everyone you meet has a sword hanging over their heads, and it’s never a question of if but _when_. She doesn’t have much of her heart left, dead or no, and she can’t afford to let it stray anywhere that isn’t firmly behind her ribs.

But Lexa stares at her, and she thinks of the rambling conversations that seems to serve little purpose than just to fill the quiet and the shitty jokes Clarke makes if only so Lexa sighs and her stern grumblings when Lexa’s injured and she’s caught picking at the scab and that time when they were _strangers_ and Lexa was starving and Clarke offered up her wrist like she didn’t care it’d probably get her killed and—

Lexa swallows.

She cares, plainly. There is little else to admit.

Clarke kicks the cage. Lexa’s eyes snap over, but she soon realises this is not an attempt of escape. Clarke stands dead still staring straight ahead for almost an entire minute—not even a twitch in her hands—and before Lexa can cautiously ask anything Clarke’s all too soon laughing like it’s all over and has fallen back into the cold floor.

She slumps back into the bars of the cage, tilts her head back as the empty smile doesn’t fade but silent tears slip out the corner of her eyes. Lexa feels a yearnful ache in her chest. She has always considered herself as someone with a natural liking to silence, but here she _hates_ it because Lexa can see the slow resignation on Clarke’s face and it absolutely terrifies her.

“How long?” Clarke whispers, her voice so low even Lexa almost misses it.

Lexa stares at her, but Clarke’s gaze stays stuck on the ceiling. “An hour or so.”

Clarke closes her eyes.

Lexa doesn’t know what to do. She shouldn’t care, she _shouldn’t_ , but she’s probably almost as terrified as Clarke now. It’ll start soon—moon sickness, she thinks it’s called. Before she’d been dragged here, she’d only known of it by word of mouth. Her and Clarke’s kind had always been wary of one another and at points it felt as if the only reason no war fell between them was because they were already warring within themselves and didn’t want more bodies to bury. Anya told her about it, once, a long, long time ago.

It’d only been a sentence or two, but she’d warned her that if there’s one thing that you never do with werewolves, it’s stand between them and outside when the moon is full. Even vampires consider the night as sacred in respect of this.

Lexa can hear Clarke’s shaky breathing and it _hurts_.

“What’s it like?” Lexa asks, more than a little sudden. Clarke’s brow twitches and she looks to her. Lexa is just relieved to have gathered a reaction. “When the moon comes, and you’re free to roam. What does it feel like?”

Clarke has always been sharper than she lets on. It clicks almost instantly, at recognising Lexa’s attempt to distract her from the agony to come. This time, when Clarke smiles, it is soft and acknowledging like Lexa is the type of something to only come around once.

“It’s nothing grand,” Clarke says quietly. Her eyes don’t leave Lexa’s for even a second and it feels like she’s seeing into whatever’s left of her soul. “You wake up and—it’s just a feeling, an instinct in your gut. You want to spend the day outside. At the start, it’s not so bad, but the later it gets you—you _have_ to, that’s how it feels. Like your heart is trying to crawl out your chest and drag you with it.”

She doesn’t deserve this. Lexa _knows_ Clarke doesn’t deserve what’s coming.

“There’s not really any way I can describe it once it’s moonrise.” Clarke shrugs, shooting Lexa a furtive grin like already knows how unsatisfying that answer is. Heat spikes behind Lexa’s eyes and she has to blink it away. “It’s just peace, really. Nothing more or less. It calls to you and you let it calm you down to every cell in your body. Everything falls away, and you’re in love.”

“That’s beautiful, Clarke,” Lexa breathes reverently.

Clarke is still staring at her like she’s looking for something she knows she won’t find. She doesn’t reply, not until the quiet has stretched on so long Lexa silently ticks off another minute in her head.

“I could make it, couldn’t I?”

Clarke’s looking so desperately at her and Lexa can’t speak.

“It’s—it’s just the moon. I can survive, can’t I? Someone has to have. We’ve been here for thousands of years, there has to be—has to be _someone_ who broke the chain, right? I could make it. I have to. I _have_ to.”

“You could,” Lexa says, like she knows without a doubt that no one can.

Clarke lets out a wet laugh. “I can,” she says, like she knows she’s already dead.

-

It’s almost here.

Clarke doesn’t need to ask the time now. Lexa knows that the werewolf can no doubt feel the oncoming full moon surging up in her bones. They’re down to minutes now and even Lexa is up standing in her cell, nervously watching how Clarke is getting more and more restless. How whenever her eyes linger too long on the cage or the wall Lexa calls out her name in warning and it’s enough.

It won’t be for long. The only reason Clarke has even any self-restraint is the fact it’s still been daylight up above. They won’t have that mercy for much further. Lexa’s stomach is rolling worse and she tries to assure herself to just let it go but she _can’t_.

Maybe it’s cruel or selfish or violently unfair, but Lexa cannot sit by and watch the same thing she’s seen happen so many times to strangers happen to Clarke. Anya would probably tell her that she shouldn’t care for a stranger and Titus would say that Clarke’s early death should be _welcomed_ , as she proved the greatest threat to overthrowing her.

But they’re not here. Lexa is the one in the cage and _Lexa_ is the one alone and with only herself as advisor.

“You need to swear to me something,” Clarke gasps out, gritting her teeth as her entire body shakes. She’s pressed right into the corner of the cage, closest to Lexa, and when Clarke’s eyes shifts over to meet hers Lexa is already nodding. “I’ll—I’m out of time. When it—when it happens, I need you to promise me that you’ll live this.”

Clarke’s hand shoots out and wraps around a bar so tight her grip goes white. Her pupils are wider than usual, heartbeat thundering so loud it’s like a war drum in Lexa’s ears.

“And that you’ll kill him. You’ll fucking kill them all. Make them fucking _regret_ ever doing this to us, yeah?”

Lexa tries to smile, even as every part of her is overwhelming in panic. “That was always my plan, Clarke. Who do you take me for?”

Clarke laughs, genuinely, and Lexa wants so badly to reach across to her. “Of course. Considering you’d hold on to shit in your past life, god fucking forbid those who wronged you in your present.”

A sudden idea slams into Lexa so intense she almost gasps. “Wait,” she breathes, “ _wait_. Do you need to be outside or just—do you just need to see it?”

“Just—need to—feel it,” Clarke pants out, each word accompanied by a lungful of air. Lexa stares at her, her mind buzzing with the possibility, but she _knows_ the second the moon has finally risen as that familiar expression she sees comes over Clarke’s face that Lexa has seen on many wolves before.

It’s the step back. The loss of awareness. How their previously wide attention shifts into one single-minded focus on getting _out_ , because there’s nothing else that matters. Clarke groans and curls in over herself. “I can’t, I can’t fucking _be_ here—” she spits, and she lurches back in time to miss Lexa’s hand jerking out to grab her.

A window. There is no chance that they’d even let them step a _toe_ outside, but if they could just see it, that might work. And Clarke has survived more fights than the usual do. She’s not nameless, Cage has come down _twice_ to see her, though she’s pretty sure Clarke doesn’t even remember the second time he had come down—had checked on her with his own eyes, that the silver coursing through wasn’t going to turn fatal.

It means that she might actually be _worth_ something alive. That they have some real, honest leverage.

Clarke throws her shoulder into the cage. It’s all feral desperation and nothing else, and the clash of sound just gets worse and _worse_ as Clarke does. It’s no surprise that not long after the metal door into the room is being shoved open and guards rush in.

“The fuck’s going on?” Emerson snaps, already whipping his baton out. Three guards come in behind him and immediately move to draw their weapons too.

Clarke keeps thrashing. The entire time she snarls with it, but it longer goes on the sound becomes less of fury and more of pain. Lexa’s seen it before and she knows what it means. The moon is meant to sing the wolf up to the surface, touches something in their blood that only they have, but if they can’t _feel_ it, the moon right on them, then it can never actually do what it’s meant to.

It’s a mounting pressure with no release. Doesn’t matter what self-control you think you have, if it’s never released, then the blood just keeps rising. The wolf gets worse. And eventually, the _human_ part of them is the reason they die. That scale of easy fifty-fifty tips too far in the wolf’s direction and it’s over.

It’s the same reason why two werewolves can’t _really_ have biological children together. There’s too much wolf, the child that comes out won’t be human at all. They’ll come out on four legs and they’ll stay on them. In the way that vampires depend on humans for survival, so do werewolves in some way, too. It’s the one thing neither of them can untangle.

The realisation spreads over Emerson’s face slow. He approaches cautiously, frowning as he watches Clarke try to shove her way out what can’t be broken. The guards behind him grow increasingly nervous and hiss for him to do something, but Emerson just raises his hand, stares at her till finally he blinks and his whole body deflates with his sigh.

“Russel,” Emerson says without taking his eyes off, “is it full moon tonight?”

A taller guard than the rest of them reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. It takes just a single search before he’s grimacing and glancing up. “Yes sir.”

“Damn,” Emerson mutters.

Lexa can see what’s about to happen next by the grim expression on Emerson’s face. Before he can even open his mouth, say the order she knows he’s going to say, she’s already pressing as close she can to them from within her cage and yelling for him.

“You can’t let her die.”

Emerson’s cold eyes flick to hers and narrow. “That so, Commander?”

“I can hear them from here,” Lexa says, not faltering an inch. “When there’s a fight.”

He sighs and grinds his teeth. “Spit out whatever you’re trying to fucking say already.”

“They’ve been calling her something, haven’t you noticed?” Lexa has to raise her voice to be heard now over the pained snarling next to her, but she sees it the second Emerson tenses. His jaw clenches worse like it’s going to pop any second and Lexa knows she’s got him. She holds his eyes anyway, raises a brow. “She’s survived twice now, even Cage wanted to know about her. How would he react, do you think? If he found out that she died here when you were meant to be watching over her?”

“The fuck do you except me to do?” Emerson snarls, bursting forward and baring his teeth. “You think I’m _stupid_ enough to take that bitch outside so she can, what, frolic around in the trees?”

“She just needs a window,” Lexa presses desperately. “Something that can open, so she can feel it on her skin.”

Emerson frowns.

Lexa waits. Something constricts in her chest, at having to ignore thrashing from next to her. Instead, her eyes don’t ever shift off Emerson, and it means that she sees every inch of the reluctant journey his expression is forced to take. For all his barking and dominance displays, at the end of day—Emerson is a lapdog.

He doesn’t want to piss off Cage. The moment he does, he loses all his power.

He hisses a curse under his breath, rubbing a hand over the stubble around along his jaw before finally he holsters the baton back into its loop. “Russel, Walker,” he barks, jerking his chin towards the cage, “get in front and ready to grab her.”

The two guards share the same panicked glance. Clarke has never once gone quietly, and there’s a body count to prove it. And _that_ was when the moon wasn’t even a factor.

Emerson sees their hesitation and sneers at them. “Don’t tell me you’re _scared_ of some fucking dog?”

They both hurry to shake their heads, but their eyes are still too wide and they don’t step forward. None of the other guards with them move, either. On any regular day the threat of Emerson’s fury would usually serve as motivation enough.

A moonsick werewolf is something else, though. It only seems to piss Emerson off more, but Lexa’s eyes jump out to Clarke next to her, now uselessly trying to dig at the stone floor, and even in the dim light Lexa can perfectly see the canine muscles that are rippling under her skin, that are _seething_ but trapped.

She doesn’t have long.

“I can take her,” Lexa calls out. Emerson jerks back to glance at her, caught midway through cursing his men. “Just guide me where. Unlike your own, I doubt she will overcome me.”

His eyes flash. “Oh, so I should let _both_ of you out, should I?”

“I don’t believe you have much of a choice.”

Emerson glares, but says nothing. His attention snaps to Clarke at a particularly harsh snarl and he grimaces at seeing her blindly rip herself back to her feet, throw her shoulder into the cage bars. For a brief second there’s a clear view of her face before it’s twisting back into a feral growl, but it’s obvious the streaks of blood that are seeping from her nose now, even a few lone drips from her eyes like red tears. Like she’s crying blood.

Lexa is already waiting when Emerson drags his eyes back.

“Get your crossbows,” he grinds out, clearly hating every word. He doesn’t once tear his stare away from her. “If she makes a single move that proves otherwise, you all have permission to kill.”

The guards hesitate a second longer, before rushing out the door.

Emerson stalks towards her until he’s just out of arm’s range of her cage. “And I _mean_ that blood-sucker. Maybe you’re right, that Cage would be pissed—but he’d rather a corpse than a fugitive. You try _anything_ , and I won’t hesitate.”

Lexa stares at him.

And she waits.

-

Clarke doesn’t make the process easy.

Which, well. To be fair that’s pretty in line with everything else about her.

Still, Lexa can’t help the aggravated sigh through her nose as Clarke tries, once again, to thrash out of the grip Lexa has around her waist pinning down her arms. It doesn’t help matters, either, the group of guards lingering nervously behind them as Lexa drags Clarke the way Emerson leads at the front. There’s at least five separate crossbows aimed directly at her, and there’s even two of the guards that have _actual_ rifles with them, which are no doubt packed with silver and would only take a couple shots and Clarke would dead before she’d even finished bleeding out.

Emerson shoots back a glare when Clarke snarls particularly loudly, her feet scrambling and tripping across the stone floor as they turn a corner and Lexa has to bodily drag her around it. It’s more than a bit offensive and Clarke would probably kill her if she said it out loud, but it really _does_ feel like trying to control a misbehaving dog. Anytime that Lexa tries to hiss at her _I’m trying to_ help _you_ , not a word of it makes sense to her.

Her arms are starting to strain from holding her back so long. Werewolves have never once been weak. And while that was usually _good_ statement, now Lexa just wants Clarke for _once_ in her entire goddamn life to go quietly.

Finally, _finally_ , instead of taking them down yet another corridor, Emerson actually leads them into a room. Lexa is sure that he didn’t take the direct route, but led them round in multiple circles and stairs and twists so it’d feel like an escapeless maze, not the compound it is. The compound with a door. And a limit. An exit.

Lexa has always had a brilliant memory.

The room is pretty much barren, though it’d clearly been _something_ at some point. There’s a few old gym machines shoved up to the walls, two stray dusty gym mats on a floor, a few rogue stacks of labelled cardboard boxes that most likely haven’t been touched since they were first packed. The air smells stale but also of cigarettes. There’ve probably been more than a couple smoke breaks snuck out in here.

What matters is the fact that even with the lights off, the room still has some light. Some _natural_ light.

There’s a small skylight embedded at an angle in the ceiling. It’s got cobwebs crowded at the edges, but it looks intact.

The full moon shines like a beacon down through it.

“It needs to be opened,” Lexa says, grunting a little when Clarke almost breaks her nose by blindly throwing her head back, trying to free herself of the arms locked around her.

The only evidence that Emerson hears her is the tick in his jaw. “Russel, there’s a switch there on the far right on the wall.”

Russel nods quickly and scurries off to do as told.

If she actually had a working set of lungs, Lexa would have been panting by now. Relief crashes through when she finally manages to drag Clarke forward in her arms and get her where the square patch of moonlight is. Lexa pushes them both down so they’re kneeling, pressed up right behind her and holding her still.

It’s not needed anymore, though.

The moment she’d gotten her down, the skylight has finished rolling its way open and Clarke goes completely still the moment now that it finally, _finally_ touches her face and she stares right up to it in complete devotion. Lexa doesn’t even need to see it—when the pupils in Clarke’s eyes swallow up almost every spec blue—because so close she can feel the way every muscle in Clarke’s body tenses up. _Preparing_.

“Don’t,” Lexa whispers fervently in her ear. “Just hold it, just hold it. Don’t, Clarke.”

It’s not for Lexa’s sake that she begs her. It’s because of a conversation they’d had once, when the night had sunk in enough that Clarke’s eyes were drooping and the only reason she was even sitting upright was because Lexa was telling her a story from her past. And Clarke knew just how rare anything personal was, so of _course_ she pushed through that exhaustion that was consuming her.

Lexa eventually stopped, just because she knew she should probably let Clarke sleep at this point.

“I’m listening,” Clarke had mumbled anyway, when Lexa was quiet for too long.

Lexa shook her fondly. “I don’t think you’re even conscious right now.”

“Shut up,” Clarke said back. It came out a little slurred, though. And her eyes were still closing on their own.

Just before she finally fell under Lexa gave in to the question she’d been wondering for weeks.

“Why don’t you ever shift?”

Clarke seemed to wake up a little for that, at least. Bleary eyes blinked over and settled on her.

“You’ve never come back as a wolf,” Lexa elaborated. Clarke just raised a brow like wondering why this was important. “Any werewolf I’ve met, the first thing they do is shift.”

Clarke’s eyes finally gave in and slipped shut, though she managed the effort to move her mouth. “We’re harder to kill shifted.”

Lexa frowned. “So why don’t you?”

Clarke smiled while her eyes stayed close. It wasn’t a good smile.

“My body is not worth anything when I’m like this, is it?”

Lexa stared at her.

Her eyes creaked open just a little, flicking out to meet hers. “For all they can take from me, that is something they will never touch.”

“Hold it,” Lexa says now, in the present, feeling Clarke trembling in her arms. “It’s just you and me,” her voice goes softer, quieter, “it’s you and me.”

Clarke exhales and it stutters.

But she listens, somehow.

Lexa can still feel the presence of Emerson and his men stood at the back of the room, weapons tense and waiting for the first sign of wrongdoing. All she does is lean closer, though, her grip tightening around her waist while Clarke never takes her eyes off from above. There are still the remnants of blood streaks from her nose, that’d seeped from her ears and even her eyes, but it’s stopped now and only dries on her skin. The moon glows down on her face. Like a prayer and damnation all at once.

They stay like that through the entire night.

-

The first time she ran away from home she was sixteen.

Her father has just died.

Abby turns up at school and pulls her out of her class to tell her. She doesn’t quite believe it at first, as her mother only barely manages to say something about a work accident, an experiment gone wrong, that they’d tried, they’d _tried_ and done everything they could to save him and it meant nothing in the end.

It is the last thing she could have ever expected. Not just in the usual way, but that on top of it her father was human. If she would ever have to make a bet on who would realistically bite it first it would be her mother by a long shot. That’s just the deal with being a werewolf. Your life expectancy by virtue should expectedly drop so it’s not in any way fucking fair that it’s her father, her human, perfectly goddamn _human_ father that is the one that’s dealt the sick hand.

Clarke hadn’t turned back up to school for weeks and when she finally did she’d only gone a couple more days before knowing she couldn’t stomach another second in this town. Sixteen is old for a werewolf, anyway. She’d had her first transformation a year ago. There’s nothing else left to hold her here.

This will become the first time she ran away from home.

It wouldn’t be the last, but everyone has to start somewhere.

But that was tomorrow. Today, for just this afternoon, Clarke is sitting on the bleachers staring out onto on empty field. Class is still due to keep kicking for another half hour before it finally bled out. She’s in no rush. The sky is clear and she only breathes deep and slow, in through her nose and out her mouth, feeling her bleeding heart pump on just a little easier for a second. The air smells like freshly cut grass and faintly of sweat. There must have been a PE class recently out here.

Clarke smells him far before anything else.

A familiar spark of anger flushes in her chest, but it’s so _tired_ now. She’s barely slept in days. Dax keeps coming towards her and she doesn’t glance to him, only exhales sharply through her nose and clenches her jaw. She expects the usual insult throwing and probably a fist too, but to her surprise, there’s nothing at all.

Dax stops at the foot of the bleachers, watches her.

Clarke keeps staring out onto the field.

“I heard about your dad.”

Her entire body stiffens up. “If you say one thing, Dax, _one_ fucking thing I don’t give a shit if I end up expelled or in prison or fucking _dead_. Nothing will save you.”

But Dax laughs, and for the first time since she had met him it’s an easy one, nothing malicious in it. “Jesus, _easy_ Griffin, I’m not here to start shit. I just…” he falters here, licking his lips. “I just wanted to say sorry. I get it. I lost my mom a few years ago.”

Clarke finally looks at him. She’s beyond confused at… whatever the hell Dax is doing. It’s beyond out of character. They’ve been swinging at each other since seventh grade. The most words she’s ever exchanged with him have been the trading insults before things got physical.

She stares at him, but he’s got his hands shoved deep in his pockets and is just eyeing her right back. It takes a minute of disbelief, but eventually she realises this really isn’t an attempt to start anything.

Her world had already split apart from what had happened weeks ago. Maybe it’s on her for being surprised anymore.

“I’m splitting tomorrow,” she says, finally admitting it out loud. “I’m not coming back.”

Dax nods. He’s hit into his growth spurt now, and he’s gotten big enough anyone who isn’t six foot or a werewolf would be wary of him. He pushes it a second, before carefully he steps up the bleachers. Clarke watches him the whole way. There’s nothing to watch, though. He comes up and sits down next to her, leaves some space between them with his hands never leaving his pockets.

They stare out into the field for a while. Neither says anything. Dax is the closest thing she has so far to a mortal enemy, and yet, after everything, in this moment it feels like none of it matters. That it never did.

“You superstitious at all, Dax?”

Old habits die hard, though.

For some reason Dax seems to take this as insult and immediately jumps to his feet. He rips his hands out his pockets, exposing his teeth like they could even do the half damage Clarke’s own could. “You trying to fucking call me something, Griffin?”

Clarke merely rolls her eyes, not in the slightest bit intimidated. “No, you fucking idiot I meant it as a genuine question. I mean, seriously? You never had a conversation with someone before that wasn’t a blow up doll? Fuck sake, let me break it down for you, I'm just _asking_ if you believe in anything.”

Dax’s face flushes red. Still, he seems to relax, even if he has to clench his fists. Slowly he sits back down. It’s a long tense few minutes. She’s almost about to give up when she hears him, so quiet it’s only canine hearing that saves her.

“Reincarnation.”

It shocks her enough she can only blink.

Her eyes snaps to his, and she has to swallow her disbelieving laugh at finding him looking nothing like she’s ever seen him. He looks _nervous_. And not the sort of nervous about worrying a punch that was thrown too hard, of seeing approaching headlights as they both scramble to their feet and bolt, of when he realise he’s outmatched. It’s simply the sort of nerves that follow any confession.

Clarke nods slowly. “I’d never peg you for that.”

Dax scoffs. “You never asked.”

The words come out biting, but when they meet eyes Clarke is smirking and he does too.

“What about you?”

Clarke’s smirk spreads wider till it’s full of teeth. “Werewolves.”

He laughs, genuinely. It’s sound that she has legitimately never heard from him. It’s oddly unsettling. “Seriously? Like vampires and shit?”

Clarke only hums. Dax stares at her before just shaking his head, brow raised high but seeming to accept that no amount of words can change her mind. “Maybe, you know,” Dax says slowly, his usually rough voice sounding strange with no fury in it, “he’ll come back as one. As a wolf.”

Clarke blinks away what’s trying to build in her eyes. “My dad?”

“Yeah.”

She breathes in shakily, laughs even worse. “That would be funny, wouldn’t it?”

Dax smiles but he doesn’t look at her.

She glances down at her watch. Her father’s watch. She’d only had it a few weeks and already it is bar anything the most precious thing she owns. It doesn’t matter that werewolves don’t wear jewellery, or really _anything_ that can’t be ripped off. Even tights are out of the question.

The moment it had been unsteadily handed to her by her mother, Clarke promised to herself she’d treasure it like a fallen star no matter what it meant.

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke says truthfully. “Just far enough until I forget.”

Dax glances to her. “That’s a long way to run.”

“What do you care?” Clarke spits, before she can stop herself. Dax just shrugs.

“I don’t.”

They stare out onto the field. It takes a while, but she has only just stood up, feeling the last of whatever that had tied her here unravel, when Dax grabs her wrist last second. This time she’s far less forgiving, her lip peeling back and a growl grinding out her chest that has Dax instinctively letting go in a flash.

“There’s just one thing I need to know,” he rushes out, and even though it grates on her she forces herself to strangle off the sound. She eyes him and he seems to take it as cue to go on. “Why’d you knock me out, that first day?”

Clarke blinks, but slow like a predator a grin spreads on her lips.

What’s it mean now, anyway? She’s already never setting foot back here. Anything that mattered is six foot underground.

“Did your brother ever show you what they killed that night on the farm? The one that killed the farmhand?” Dax frowns, but after a slow beat he shakes his head. Clarke steps closer to him, never lets her eyes shift from his own. “They said it was a wolf, but it was a _weird_ looking one, right? Didn’t have as much fur as it should have, its coat was thinner than any wolf’s should. Felt different too. More like hair. Had longer front legs. Toes were more like fingers, had bigger teeth, bigger claws. It took so many more bullets than would make sense to take an animal down.”

Dax’s eyes get wider and wider.

Clarke pulls back. She shrugs, stepping down the bleachers. “My uncle died the same night. There’s nothing else to it.”

The bell is due any minute now. Clarke steps out onto the grass. It’s a familiar feeling under her feet, and already she’s carefully slipping the watch off her wrist. She snatches her backpack that’d been sitting on the ground below and slides the watch inside. Looks over her shoulder, throwing her bag onto her back.

Dax keeps staring and staring at her.

Clarke glances up into the sky as she starts walking backwards. “It’s meant to be a full moon tonight.”

He frowns, but there’s something nervous in his eyes now. “What’s that matter to me?”

Clarke smiles with teeth that are too sharp.

The bell goes off and she has already walked off out of sight by the time the rest of the students pile out. Dax tries to follow after her but he gives up barely a minute in, losing her the moment she splits off into the woods nearby. She’s aware of this the entire time, of course, and is patient right until she’s sure she is alone again.

No one sees the blond wolf running for miles, a bag jostling against its back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed that. im _hoping_ the next chapter will be up a week from now, but i havent finished it yet so, it'll probably be done by then, but if things go wrong then it might take an extra week or two. but! i have a good chunk down. so. you know. worst case scenrio.
> 
> thank you for reading and i wish youse all a good one :)
> 
> translations:  
> Hofli wamplei nou get yu in feis nowe. - May death never know your face.


	3. you are the pulse that sings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, in a shocking turn of events, i pretty much got to the end of this chapter and realised that i was.... no where near the end, so i decided to just cut it off and up the chapter count by one. everything is under control. its fine. stop looking at me like that.  
> pardon the typos in this, im very tired.  
> again, tho, thank you for the all kind comments. they seriously mean the world to me.  
> i hope you enjoy :)

_They're tearing their claws in the ground_

_They're staring with blood in their mouths_

_Mama, they won't let me out._

[ _\- Wolves by Phosphorescent (2007)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0r3JIlGfGw)

Dawn comes like it always will.

Lexa feels it before it does, that warning prickling along her skin. All the hairs rise up on her arms and her neck like her body’s trying to get itself away on its own, like it’s _reaching_ and if Lexa doesn’t move for it it’ll find some way to sate itself on its own, twist out from under the sun’s thumb.

The other way she knows it’s coming is that moon’s no longer shining through the window anymore. And even though her arms feel heavy and stiff after spending the whole night wrapped Clarke’s waist and _holding_ her there—she feels that exact second when every part of Clarke goes lax, and then immediately stiffens again. _Consciously_ stiffens up. Realises where she is, what’s happening.

Clarke blinks slowly back in awareness as the morning wakes up. Those first few tentative beams of sun reach down on them, shines right into Clarke’s eyes and makes the blue that’s returned burn like crystals in the dawnlight. She doesn’t quite turn around fully but more just twists her neck little so her mouth ends up dangerously close to Lexa’s own.

“It’s morning?” Clarke whispers. Her voice is scratchy and weak, but there’s also real notes of confusion in it, like she’s just woken in a dream. Like none of this is real.

Lexa—for the first time since yesterday morning—allows the stress to melt out of her. “It is.”

Clarke looks up at her. Her face is still so close, and when Lexa glances down to meet her gaze there’s barely an inch between them. It’s the closest they’ve ever been. Probably the most they ever _will_. “Am I dead? Did I die? Is this…”

Lexa can’t help but smile a little. “If you think this is heaven, then I am deeply, deeply concerned for you.”

“I could’ve meant hell.”

“I’m dead,” Lexa says, sobering and trying to ignore how close Clarke’s face still is, how when she talks she can _feel_ the words brush against her lips, “but _you_ aren’t quite so lucky. It’s morning, Clarke. It’s the morning.”

Clarke doesn’t stop staring at her. “Morning?” she repeats, soft and awed.

Lexa can’t answer this time, has to swallow what’s thickening in her throat. She nods. A slow smile spreads on Clarke’s face and it takes everything Lexa has to make sure her eyes don’t drop to it.

“She back?” Emerson yells from across the room.

Through the night the guards had traded shifts once their eyes got too heavy, but Emerson was the only one who never once left the room, never let his stare shift off them. Lexa glances over her shoulder and sees him still standing sentry there, his gun tight and ready in his hands. Even with no sleep in him his eyes are still as sharp as they always are. He’s the worst of the worst, sure. But Lexa understands why Cage keeps him around and allows him all he does.

A part of her wants to lie, so she can stretch this moment a little longer. But it’s far too obvious to argue anything else.

Lexa grinds her teeth, though she nods stiffly.

Emerson comes forward and all the guards with him straighten up automatically. “You,” he says, jutting his chin at Lexa. “You’re first. Get up.”

Something dangerous and unforgiving seethes under her skin. Something she’s spent so long learning to tame.

Clarke seems to sense it. It’s probably not that hard with them both pressed into each other. “The sun’s probably going to start hurting you, anyway,” she murmurs up to her.

“Probably,” Lexa says, even they both know it’s a lie. She’s too old to have dawn be so harsh on her. Dead in the afternoon would be a whole different story, but that’s only because the sun’s had the chance to wake itself up, then, rub the sleep out of its eyes and settle itself above them like the reaper.

It’s a nice lie, though. A kind one. Soft one.

Lexa unwinds her arms from around Clarke’s waist and stands up.

She feels Clarke’s eyes track her every step out the room.

-

There’s a fight that night.

Not for them, though.

This is the third one that neither of them has been involved in. It seems to be a weekly thing, and it makes Clarke wonder just how many they must have caged up around here. How deep does this hellhole go? Even with minimum effort it’s a mess of costs housing someone—or some _thing_ , probably, in this case. Creatures like harpies, minotaurs… it’s not like you can give them a metal box and call it a day.

Plus, none of them even looked that underfed. Spare for when they were starving Lexa that one time—the more fights Clarke’s won, the nicer the food gets, and even Emerson eases up some, though it clearly grates on him so bad that he gets that particular swelling vein in his forehead that only seems to appear around Clarke.

Even more baffling was when Emerson came in that afternoon, that vein already swelling, and he’d ground out that she has to make a choice. And that choice?

If she wanted a bed.

Clarke just stared a him, wondering if Lexa lied and she really _had_ died last night and she’d finally wound up in hell and this was just the beginning to an eternity of manipulative torture.

But Emerson exhaled sharply through his nose. “Well?” he spat, looking like he was going to punch a wall any second.

Clarke shot a bewildered glance to Lexa. Lexa just looked right back at her, raised a brow. “He’s being a serious.”

Definitely dead.

“Alright,” Clarke said slowly.

Emerson nodded like it was a bullet he was swallowing and jerked around to storm out the room. She sits on that intensely confusing bed now, backed up against the wall, though still on the floor, and every now and again she can’t help but push her palm down into the mattress to feel it dip, make sure it’s _real_.

Lexa catches her doing it around the third time. “You’ve survived a month. Two fights _and_ the full moon; you even killed the minotaur. It’s a reward.”

“Your cage is empty?”

“I want nothing from them.”

Clarke only shrugs, stretches out her legs on her newly acquired bed. Figures a _vampire_ would refuse something based on pride. Honestly, at some point you’ve got to sacrifice it for survival. Primest damn beings around.

“I’m gonna convince them to get me a TV.”

To Lexa’s credit she nods like she believes her. “I’m sure you will, Clarke.”

It’s a few hours later when a wave of cheers and hollering echoes down towards them. Then there’s a roar, one that’s pained and furious like the creature that’s out there is probably dragging itself out on the sand, clutching at wherever it’s been bitten into—but the blood, it’s all going too fast, and that minuscule gap between fingers now feels like the space between stars, the sort of space that can never be filled.

Clarke blinks the burning out of her eyes and shakes her head. She’s thinking too much again. It does her no favours driving herself mad trying to paint a picture with just her ears. Anything could go.

“Tell me about your family,” Clarke says suddenly.

Lexa glances to her. Clarke does too, though she stays sat on the comfort of her bed. After a month of rough floors the soft sheets and mattress below her feel like heaven. “My family?” Lexa says, visibly confused.

“Well, I mean, I know you’ve got your… sire. Maker. Whatever, the—the one who made what you are.”

“My first,” Lexa corrects.

“Right. I know you’re close with her. But before, you did mention a… coven?”

Lexa nods, remembering.

Clarke waves a tired hand in her direction. “So? I know you’ve got her, and that one guy who raised you who got turned too, but what about the rest? Your coven? Are they family too?”

Lexa tilts her head. She doesn’t look at her, but ahead, her eyes reaching out centuries backwards. “I suppose,” Lexa finally settles with. “But—it’s not quite. Anya and Gustus, they are probably what you would usually consider family. It’s different for us. You live so long, so many come and go. It’s dangerous to attach yourself like that. Our hearts may beat no more, but it’s just as liable to break.”

“But attachments have got to be your lifeline, don’t they?”

Lexa looks to her, at that.

Clarke stares right back. “You can’t shut something off like that, Lexa. Even if you’re a dead man walking. What’s eternity worth if you’re alone?”

There’s a fight that rises in her, but it seems to drain out just as quick. Lexa slumps back into the bars behind, loses the stiff posture she’s always so good at holding. “I’ve lost a lot. A lot of _people_.”

“Because you care,” Clarke says, gently, not trying to start anything, just to understand.

“Because I care,” Lexa repeats, admitting it.

Silence falls between them. It goes on so long that Clarke adjusts how she’s sitting, instead lies down on her bed but keeps her head closest to Lexa, just feeling the cold metal of the bars pressing against her hair. It makes Lexa glance to her, at least. When they meet eyes Clarke grins a little and Lexa just shakes her head, though still, like she’s just as helpless, dutifully she slides herself closer, so she’s right up against the bars like Clarke.

Clarke has to crane her neck a little to see, but the discomfort is worth it for the sight of Lexa above her staring so softly down at her. Warmth spills out in her chest and she _knows_ Lexa can most definitely hear it, the way the damn traitor stutters, but miraculously Lexa acts like she can’t.

Maybe it’s because she’s hoping the same thing Clarke is. That none of it really counts if you don’t say anything. It can’t become real.

It’s far too late for that, though.

“I’m their Commander,” Lexa admits.

Her voice is soft, the sort of tone reserved only for secrets.

“My coven… well, I have _mine_ , which was the one Anya was in when she turned me, so in turn they become my blood as well. We’re Trikru. In English, it means People of the Trees.”

Clarke can’t keep the smile out of her voice. “Got a thing for trees, do you?”

“Says the werewolf.”

Clarke shrugs, can’t deny that.

“ _Anyway_. As I was saying,” and she shoots a quick glare at her, as if it’d ever make Clarke hesitate even once, “we’re only one clan. Or we _were_ one clan. Centuries ago it was different. There were alliances, and you trusted only your clan and cautiously trusted those meant to be your allies, but wars were constant. You want to know the worst kind of people to hold grudges? Vampires. Because we never forget. We don’t _die_ , not really, so no one’s particularly invested in righting all their wrongs in time for their deathbed. There’s simply no point.”

Clarke nods seriously. “You _are_ pretty bad with grudges.”

“But we _do_ die,” Lexa says, ignoring the interruption this time. “It just takes a little longer. And with the way we were all treating each other—well, it was getting to point where we weren’t _really_ immortal anymore. We weren’t even covens anymore, were barely clans. It was you and no one else. The humans were at war and we were too.”

Clarke tilts her neck up, so she can see her face again. Lexa’s not looking at her anymore, but off to the side. Off to the past.

A small smile curves right at the edge of Lexa’s mouth. “This is why Anya turned me. Even she could see the end we were making for ourselves. She told me she would save me, and in return I would be indebted to her, to help her people. So I did.”

Clarke thinks about the image of Anya being so desperate that she’d go as far as turning a _human_ who knows nothing of their existence just to find someone separate—someone who doesn’t have that hate yet built into them, doesn’t have those grudges and those memories and those centuries of suffering—and, well, it surprises her how just… _not_ surprised she is.

Figures it’d be Lexa. She’s just that sort of once in a million.

“You brought them together?” Clarke asks into the quiet.

Lexa hums. “It took many, many years. Anya was not the only one who foresaw our ruin. Others, they saw what our path of wars was leading to and were eager for change. It was the ones who _didn’t_ want change that gave the most resistance. The ones who thrived off ruin, needed fresh blood always running in their veins.”

Lexa finally glances down, again. Clarke waits for it and gets lost in that green like she always does. No wonder they’re called the Tree People. There’s a whole damn _forest_ hiding in her iris.

“But they listened, eventually. We formed the coalition and a council and created the peace we have now.”

“And you’re the Commander of it.”

Lexa nods. Except, the corner of her mouth tugs up. “Technically, I’m royalty.”

Clarke’s eyes go wide. “No shit?”

“No shit,” Lexa says, now smiling fully around the words.

“I’m not calling you your highness.”

“Of course not. You would call me your _majesty_. Highness would be an insult.”

Clarke rolls her eyes and ignores Lexa’s smug grin. “I’d like to formally request a revolt.”

Lexa nods seriously, playing along. “I’ll have a word with HR.”

Clarke manages to hold out an impressive thirty seconds before bursting into laughter. Lexa doesn’t laugh with her, but her eyes shine in that way that’s so, so rare and her grin spreads till even her teeth are showing. It’s the sort of smile that Clarke’s only seen maybe once before.

The sudden urge to reach her fingers through the bars and touch her is so overwhelming her hand actually twitches.

God, this is bad.

“What about you?” Lexa asks after a while. Clarke blinks back into reality. “Do you have a… pack?”

Clarke barks a dry laugh. “ _Pack_. What? You gonna ask me if I follow some alpha’s ass around too?”

“Well, I’d assume _you_ would be the alpha. You are rather terrible at doing what you’re told.”

“Like you’re any better,” Clarke mutters through a frown.

Lexa just gives her a long, long look and waits with that sort of patience that only vampires have. It’s the type of patience you watch whole civilisations rise and burn with.

Clarke gives in with a sigh. “I got _family_. No packs, or whatever. Only the crazy ones believe in that shit. Me, I was born into it like everyone else. The great family curse.” She can’t help the amused quirk of her mouth, still staring up at Lexa and never once taking her eyes away. “You can’t bite someone. You ever learn that? The wolf, you’ve got to have the gene for it. It has to already be in your blood. My mom had it and her father did before her and on and on it goes. A werewolf bite doesn’t do anything but kill you.”

Lexa looks genuinely curious. “When you first came here, you asked Emerson to check if his men were becoming like you.”

Clarke just shrugs. “I was messing with him. I hadn’t even shifted when I fought them off, anyway. _That’s_ when you have to be worried. If I a bite human, like this,” and she gestures down at herself, taps her teeth, her _human_ shaped teeth, “it wouldn’t do anything. Or it wouldn’t _infect_ at least. Depends where you bite into.”

“But if I was shifted, if I was wolfed out…” Clarke grimaces. “It’s a bad death, man. A human will be dead by morning. There’s no cure, no nothing. The wolf is made for those with the blood. And if you _don’t_ have that blood, then the bitten just spends hours and hours being caught between—‘cause that blood is in _them_ now, and it’s trying to do what it’s made for in a body that’ll never listen. If your family loves you, or if whatever werewolf you’ve fought with has any ounce of humanity in them, they’ll put you out of it. Just let you go.”

They’re both quiet for a moment. Clarke watches Lexa’s face the whole while, catalogues each step of the journey her expression goes through.

Clarke clears her throat, shakes her head. “Anyway. Makes family get-togethers a fuckin’ nightmare. One year we had to end it hours early because an aunt tried to rip the face off one of my uncles. To be fair, he did sort of deserve it, and it was _very_ entertaining but it dampened the mood. ‘Cause the _second_ the smell of the change gets in the air, right, everyone else starts thinking about it too, and if you don’t step in early enough now everyone’s going for it.”

Lexa laughs lowly in the back of her throat. “I imagine it must fair quite the scene.”

“I just feel bad for all those marrying in,” Clarke grins. “Poor bastards got no idea what they’re stepping into. My mom says my dad’s reaction was half the reason she married him. He just said one thing: does this mean we can’t adopt a dog?”

Lexa must hear the way her voice changes when she mentions her father, because this time, when she glances down to her, something different is sitting in her eyes. Something softer.

Clarke wants to reach through the bars again.

“You don’t talk about him often,” Lexa says, careful, clearly knowing it’s unsteady ground she’s walking and is ready to jump back any second.

“Hurts,” Clarke answers quietly.

Lexa seems to understand.

“Your family… are they looking for you now? If the stories are correct, your kind is meant to always be able to find each other. Like there’s a homing beacon inside you.”

Clarke blinks a few times to clear her eyes. “If you truly love someone, you will never lose them,” she quotes aloud. It’s what her mother always says. Probably is what _her_ father told her. “Still doesn’t matter, though. I’ve already got a habit for disappearing. By the time they realise something’s wrong, I’ll probably be dead.”

“You lasted this long,” Lexa refutes.

Clarke doesn’t answer.

Instead of speaking, she finally gives in and stretches out her hand. She’s lying on her back, and Lexa is still sitting by her, and it means that when Clarke slowly, slowly lets her arm push up until it’s sliding above her and through that gap that’s only just big enough to fit her wrist—Lexa actually _jumps_ , when Clarke’s fingers are suddenly brushing the tips of Lexa’s own that hang down from her propped knee.

Her heart pounds like it’s going to give out any second, but Clarke holds strong. She doesn’t push it, just waits for Lexa to decide. It feels like a whole century that Lexa spends staring down at the hand that’s hovering near own. The one that wants to entwine, connect them like they never should.

Lexa is still staring when her hand slowly twists up to show her palm, and she slides their fingers together, fills in between those impossible gaps.

It feels like a promise.

-

The first time she fell in love she was twenty-one.

It doesn’t end well.

She’s working at a bar where the floor above is the owner’s apartment that she sleeps in the spare room of. Niylah is kind— _too_ kind—and really she’d just seen that hunger and exhaustion in her eyes that could never really be wrung out and she’d offered the place to stay, that she could work off the rent below. It was a lot better than some of the _other_ deals she’d taken in her life. Clarke didn’t even need to think on it.

Plus, she hadn’t really… meant to stay here. It was only that _this_ was where her car had finally broken down, that no desperate prayers or loving or swearing could coax the engine back to life. A check over by the nearest mechanic she could find and a list of the insane amount of parts needing replacing, Clarke had known it was hopeless—and, honestly, the mechanic just looked awed that the thing had even managed to roll its way in here.

The car is broken because she’d pushed it the furthest she could in one go, where usually she was at least semi-cautious with it, was careful so it’d last as long as it could. But not this time.

No. This time, she was on the run.

Here is just where she’s ended up because of that.

It’s only half her fault. Maybe a _heavy_ half, but the rest of it, that can’t be tied so surely with her. Relied more on the fault of proximity.

Years ago, her mother got into a fight with some other wolf. The story was one that Clarke had to fight to get out of her, because any time she tried asking about it Abby was begrudged anyway just to _admit_ the fight even happened, that there was another wolf out there where if they ever met again, ever accidently stepped on each other’s paws, there’d be blood, no question. But Abby _did_ tell her mostly as a warning.

Because the fact that Clarke was her blood meant that wolf might go for her instead if they ever met, call it close enough. Werewolves don’t care a lot about the fine details.

Her name is Diana. Once, Abby and her were friends, or at least tolerated each other. The town was small and they both lived just a bit too close each other, close enough that it set both of them on edge. Why Abby didn’t just clear off the second she caught even a whiff of another werewolf’s scent, it was because this was also the same town she’d met Jake in. And this was all before they’d gotten married, had a kid. This was the beginning. Where it all circled back to.

Here was where Abby had fallen in love.

But the way that Jake found out about what she was—the way that Clarke had assumed all up until that moment, fourteen and listening with fiercely wrapped attention, something she’d never once given her mother before—it wasn’t because that Abby’d told him one day, had sat him down and revealed the gene that lurked in her blood. The one that had a chance to rise in any kids they had. It was because one day, Jake’s car had broken down in a certain patch of road. In a certain patch of woods. Where a certain werewolf was in the process of shifting. A certain werewolf that wasn’t Abby.

Jake saw it all.

Her mother said it was dumb luck that she’d been running down dinner that night too. That she’d tasted his scent on the air and then his _fear_ and she could book it for him, crash into Diana’s leap that would’ve landed in his throat, teeth flashing. Her father said it was fate. That no chain of events lined up like that without someone taking the time to carefully place every piece, mark every step.

They’d brawled and clawed at each other, but Diana was the one that staggered back limping and defeated. She’d have probably died there even, except Abby limped her way back, too, pain burning at her flank and shoulders where teeth had ripped into flesh. Instead of finishing her off she’d just snarled at her, snapped her teeth. Telling her to run. This was her one chance. Her one mercy.

Diana took it, but not without forgetting. Not without burning into her memory that Abby had almost killed her own over a human that’d witnessed the shift. One that didn’t even _know_ about them.

“If you ever hear of her, wherever you are, you _run_ ,” Abby had finished with, and Clarke only nodded in response, as all her effort was in smothering the grin that wanted to spread. All the shit she’d been given for getting caught in fights, and yet here her mother was. Exactly the same. if the memory was old enough, anyway.

Abby must’ve seen the bits of it that escaped, though, because with a frown she’d told Clarke to clean the house. Clarke did it for once without complaint, still grinning the whole way through.

She should’ve listened harder, though.

Because of course it’s from _Diana_ of all people that she accidently steals from, all those years later. Except, well. The _stealing_ wasn’t accidental. The accident is that it’s Diana house that she broke into. It probably doesn’t help that she’s a more than a bit drunk, either. Where she doesn’t realise her mistake until only on the way out, when she spots the one framed photo that’s sitting up on an otherwise empty shelf—and she sees _her_. The woman that looks exactly like how her mother described. Has that same scar on her cheek, that same grim glint in ice blue eyes.

Maybe her father was a little right. Maybe someone really was watching over her and setting up her every step.

And maybe they’re a bit of a vindictive prick.

Clarke is just on the end of her shift and looking forward to the call of her bed on the floor above when the bar door opens behind. She only shoots a passing look over her shoulder, glances to the young scruffy man with hair that spills out down to his shoulders like a mop and is about to turn back around to clear the empty table in front of its dirty glasses when his scent hits.

He’s a werewolf. That’s not really the shocking part, would garner nothing more than a curious look and a secret nod, but what _does_ make her whip around it’s that it’s not just any werewolf, it’s a werewolf she’s met before. The one who almost got her killed two nights ago because when he came across _her_ game she’d hunted down, he had gotten pissy and got loud enough that flashlights and shouts got directed their way from hunters that were about to luck out on far bigger game than they’d gone out for.

Eventually it came to the point where a light flashed directly into her eyes and she had to run for it.

He seems to come to the same conclusion around the same time, freezing after only one step into the bar and stares wide-eyed at her. Clarke stares right back at him, tasting the air and then running her tongue under her top lip, making sure this is really him, that his scent is the same from that other werewolf, and then once she’s _sure_ a snarl is ripping out her throat and she’s storming forward.

His face goes slack, but he’s barely raised his hands in time before Clarke’s grabbing onto his jacket and shoving him into the wall.

“You almost got me _killed_ ,” Clarke hisses into his still shocked face.

He keeps his hands up to ward her off even with the death grip she’s still got on his jacket. “And I’d never have done so if I’d known you had a face like that.”

Clarke’s lip curls up further into a snarl. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you _right now_.”

“How else could I get you a free drink?”

“ _Hey_.”

It’s Niylah. Clarke glances back, sees the warning look Niylah is giving her. How she’s already shaking her head.

Clarke looks back to the werewolf. And while it grates on every one of her instincts, she pushes him into the wall but steps back, lets him go. No way she’s losing her bed over one jackass who happened to stroll in. “You’re lucky I like it here,” Clarke mutters, trying to rid the snarl off her lips. It doesn’t work.

He just grins at her, though, like he’s already enamoured. “Let me make it up to you,” he says quickly, “I’m sorry about the other night—I was just so hungry, and when I saw that deer lying around…”

“You mean the one I was _standing_ over? What, you thought it ripped the chunk out of its neck itself?”

“I’m Finn,” he says anyway. “Come on, yesterday was yesterday. At least let me buy you a drink and I can explain to you…?” and he pauses a beat, raises his brow in an expectant way for her to finish his sentence, introduce herself.

Clarke just glares right back at him. “And _I’m_ not interested. Look, do what you want. Just leave me alone and don’t be fucking stupid. I rather like not having a stomach full of bullets.”

She doesn’t let him answer, just turns around and heads back to where Niylah is still cautiously watching her from across the bar. Clarke offers a tired wave of her hand, to say it’s alright, nothing to worry. Niylah bites her lip before shaking her head to herself and finding some glass to wipe down.

Finn just trails her right at heels, though.

Clarke stops and sighs. Reluctantly, she spins back around. Finn’s only a few paces behind and looks like a dog hoping for scraps.

Still, he seems, at least, to sense the _real_ warning that’s thrumming in her blood because his expressions turns to something more genuine. “I mean what I said, I’m sorry for the other night. It’s just been days since I last ate. I was so _hungry_ and then I saw that deer right there, like the damn thing was _waiting_ for me, and I just forgot everything else. You—you get it, right? You know what a hunger like that’s like?”

It burns in her mouth, but Clarke reluctantly agrees. “Yes.”

“So?” Finn says, a tentative smile spreading on his face.

Clarke shoots him a flat look. “So you get to live.”

Finn laughs, but concedes, dips his head and backs away. “Alright then, oh, princess of these almighty lands, I do so humbly apologise of intruding your territory and will leave you to be.” And to top it all off he offers her a dramatic, waist deep bow, glances up with a wink and then turns around, strolling to the door with his hands deep in pockets and humming happily under his breath.

Clarke only lets herself smile when his back is turned.

-

She realises the truth one night when she’s supposed to be asleep.

“You wanted to be caught, didn’t you?”

Lexa’s doing her usual meditation thing next to her. She only does it when Clarke sleeps. A part of Clarke is still trying to work out if she should be offended by this or not, because she _knows_ that Lexa only waits till Clarke’s asleep because that’s when she stops talking. It’s both considerate and insulting.

Clarke knows she’s right when Lexa doesn’t answer, keeps mediating.

Or at least pretending to.

“I know you’re not meditating, Lexa.”

“Not _anymore_ ,” Lexa says lowly. Her eyes stay closed.

Clarke exhales through her nose and stares up at the ceiling, trying to remember that she actually really does like Lexa. That this will all be worth it. There’s no way out of this alone. “Talk to me. Please.”

Lexa sighs too. “It seems you already know the answer, Clarke.”

“That’s why I want to hear you say it,” Clarke says. Lexa seems to finally give up hope that she’ll be having any fulfilling meditation tonight and opens her eyes. She still doesn’t turn to her, but Clarke can see it even from where she’s sat that Lexa’s attention is on her. On _them_.

A solid minute passes until Lexa speaks. It looks like she keeps trying, but then she frowns and closes her mouth, rearranges the words.

“You did not know about here,” Lexa starts, because of course if she ever _actually_ answers a question directly her entire body would immediately self-combust. Or at least Clarke assumes so. She shakes her head and Lexa sees it, even if she’s only watching her out the corner of her eye. “You never lost people to this mountain?”

“We’re in a _mountain?_ ”

Lexa gestures so-so with her hand. “In a way. Haven’t you wondered why the police have never come, why this place has never been investigated?”

Clarke shrugs. “It’s a rich white guy.”

“Fair,” Lexa admits. “But _that_ assumes he’s been found out. Which he hasn’t. Because we are under a mountain. Simply, no one can hear us.”

“ _Under_ a mountain?” Lexa nods. Clarke lets her head tip back into the bars, whistles impressively. Or maybe just hopelessly. “Damn. Could probably blow a bomb under here and no one would know.”

Lexa doesn’t dispute it, just dips her head and keeps staring forward like it’ll save her if she doesn’t look. Then she stops, and blinks, pulling in a deep breath. Clarke watches the slow rise and fall of her chest and wonders if it even makes near the same effect as it used to. Maybe it’s more the habit of it that’s the comforting part. It’s not the air itself; it’s the way the chest expands.

“I am not leaving here until I have killed every last one of them.”

Her heart does something frantic in her throat, though Clarke only nods slowly at the admission.

“They were taking vampires,” Lexa goes on. Her voice is shaking, like there’s so much buried in there that’ll never be unearthed. “At first we figured the disappearances were hunters. They were too unrelated to be results of infighting. It wasn’t one coven; it was _all_ the covens. And no one wants to go back to those centuries of wars, anyway. Even Azgeda—the most vicious of all the clans, probably—even _they_ aim for peace most days. They lost the most people, in our worst hours. No one was looking to spark another war.”

Lexa is silent for a while. Clarke stretches one of her legs over bed, lets her eyes lazily trace the shadows of Lexa’s face over and over. It makes her want to know if Lexa looked different before. If when she was _alive_ and human the cut of her face was different—maybe her jaw wasn’t the same harsh line, was looser. Nose didn’t slope the same way.

Or maybe nothing physical even changed at all. Maybe vampires do just as vampires do, and questioning that is like questioning where all these supernatural races even come from: no one fucking knows.

It’s just the way it is. Someone made them, or they made themselves, and here they all are.

“People listen to me,” Lexa admits quietly. Clarke nods slowly. She doesn’t doubt that an inch. “I almost succeeded once,” Lexa blurts, and Clarke stiffens up in her cage.

“You mean succeeding in… escaping here?”

“I was not… always alone like this. _Separate_ like this. They have rooms, for the bigger creatures, but the rest of us they just keep lined up in cages. They separated me after we attempted an escape, all of us caged together.” Lexa’s hands clench, nails digging into her knees. “Many died. We got close—so _close_ —but we couldn’t open enough of the cages in time, so their numbers overwhelmed ours. They almost killed me after, when they were dragging the survivors all back—but Cage, he was reluctant. He’s made me a big name, you see. If I die _outside_ of the ring, he will lose money and reputation. And he doesn’t care for much else.”

Clarke is surprised when Lexa’s head finally turns, meets her eyes. They’re not wet, but they’re so _tired_ and ancient and resigned it’s so much worse than if they were tears.

“They would have isolated me completely, but if there is one thing they fear more than my having something to fight for—it’s having _nothing_. I will kill them all. I know that. _They_ know that. But they want me to watch all the new victims come in, so that I watch them die, to remind me of those that died before. For me. When we tried to escape.”

Clarke swallows thickly and doesn’t know what to say.

Lexa smiles quietly like she’s already doomed. “They think I will hesitate. If they have someone I care about. Someone they can use.”

“You won’t, though,” Clarke says, her voice trembling only a little.

Lexa holds her stare. Her eyes get worse and Clarke knows.

Clarke blinks away the burning behind her eyes. “Well,” she says, and she tries laughing, but it still doesn’t sound right anyway, “whatever way this finally goes, just promise me you’ll burn this whole fucking place down, when they’re all dead. If we’re so far out no one will hear then make sure you _finish_ this here. You destroy it from the root. You can’t let something like this ever grow again. Do that—for me. Please.”

“You might do it yourself,” Lexa says, but there’s no real hope in her voice.

Clarke just smiles sadly back at her. “They’ll make us fight each other long before that. They’re getting twitchy even now.”

Lexa doesn’t answer. She stares right back at her and they both _feel_ that unnameable settle between them, that inevitability that’s be hiding there right from the start, was there even in the first second that Clarke opened her eyes here and saw that stoic vampire sitting next to her.

It’s not even a question on who’d outfight the other, anymore.

It’s who will be the one to hesitate first.

Clarke is the one who tears her eyes away. She gets now why Lexa was trying so hard not to look at her before. It all feels too _real_ when they’re looking at each other, like there’s no way this will end without one of them dragging the other down with them.

“The mountain is impenetrable from the outside,” Lexa reveals, seemingly out of nowhere.

But Clarke frowns only to realise she’s actually finally answering her question, the one she’d asked right at the start. From the outside the mountain is impenetrable. The _inside_ , though… “That’s why you let yourself get taken. Why no one has come for you, even if you’re so high up.”

Lexa is quiet. “They are my people. It had to be done. We’ve lost so many to here. Someone had to do it, so I went.”

“You must have known you’d have a borderline guaranteed chance of dying for this, though, right?”

And Lexa just looks at her, calm as anything. “Would you not have done the same for your family?”

Clarke scowls and looks away. She doesn’t speak, and after a whole five minutes of nothing passes Lexa seems to accept the conversation is over, been wrung out all it can. Lexa exhales a long, slow breath through a nose but settles back into position, closes her eyes and falls back in to that meditation Clarke still hasn’t worked out is a vampire thing or a _Lexa_ thing.

She waits until Lexa is truly under it again, and only then does she glance up. Watches her face. And all she wants to ask is, _What did you look like before?_ _What made you like this?_

In the end she just burrows into her bed and sleeps.

-

She gets a whole two weeks of peace.

No fights, no nothing.

At the start she’s relieved. She’s only _just_ survived both the fights she’d had and considering Emerson’s vendetta he’s probably out snooping some untouched jungle trying to find something that’s specifically designed to kill werewolves. It doesn’t help her anxiety that she hasn’t seen him these two weeks, either. Like before, at first she’d been relieved. But then the more days passed where nothing happened and she didn’t see him the more her body just strung up tighter and tighter, waiting for that other shoe to drop.

It’s been almost a month since her fight with the minotaur. Chances are it’s only taking so long because Emerson won’t let her fight until he _knows_ he’s got it in the bag this time.

She hopes it’s not something with a lot teeth.

Who she’s fucking kidding, it’s _definitely_ going to be something with a lot of teeth.

Clarke is in the middle of a game of twenty questions with Lexa that’s failing terribly because Lexa only answers one out of nineteen questions, when Lexa suddenly straights up in her cage and her eyes snap to the thick door. Clarke frowns, but she follows her gaze and after straining her hearing she finds what Lexa had picked up on first—vampire hearing is right up there with werecats, much to Clarke’s chagrin.

A group of guards are trudging their way over, their steps bouncing against the walls.

“Someone’s got a fight,” Clarke mutters, her frown deepening.

Lexa clenches her jaw. They both know the someone is one of them. At this point she’s not even sure what would be worse, really. The idea of Lexa stepping out here and never coming back has her entire body going cold.

The door beeps.

“We do what we always do,” Lexa murmurs, steeling her voice.

Clarke rolls her head against the bars and quirks a brow at her. “You finally admit we’re a _we_?”

Lexa glances at her too, but she doesn’t say anything. It’s probably a good thing.

The door is heaved open and Emerson is the first face through it. His eyes immediately track to Clarke and stick on her and somehow it’s _more_ unnerving to see he doesn’t that same arrogant grin, that smug curve of his mouth. Instead it’s totally stone. Totally _sure_.

This is a very bad sign.

Clarke slowly stands up, preparing for the usual breakout that’s going to go down. Emerson doesn’t flinch, though. He just calmly comes forward and stands a few paces of from her cage. And then he reaches for the gun in his holster and raises it, settling it on dead her. Clarke stiffens but it only takes a horrified second of staring before realising that his gun, it’s not the right shape. Not for a bullet.

Clarke bares her teeth. “You’re not going to fucking tranq me _again_ , are you?”

Emerson keeps staring. “Will you come quietly?”

Clarke stares right back.

“Thought so,” Emerson sighs, and pulls the trigger. It stabs somewhere in her arm and Clarke stumbles back, eyes flashing even as she’s already swaying and collapsing down to one knee, uselessly grabbing the stupid needle and throwing right back at him.

“Coward,” Clarke spits, but then it all overwhelms at once and she’s unconscious before she can even finish hitting the ground. The last thing she sees is Emerson coming forward and twisting the key into the lock, the click of gears sounding like she’s underwater, his face blurring and slipping through the ripples.

She doesn’t dream this time.

And that’s probably a good thing too.

-

She wakes up on her own.

Her mouth feels like it’s filled with sand and her head keeps pulsing behind her eyes. Clarke groans and rolls onto her side from where she’d been flat on her back, presses her palms into her face only to stop midway, realises the heavy cuffs that are clamped around her wrists. Fuckin’ tranquisler. This is the _third_ time, now. If it happens for a fourth she’s killing someone. Hopefully Emerson.

When she manages to blink open her eyes the first thing she sees is a pair of black boots.

They shift up further, and Emerson is there sitting on a rock staring at her. The tranq gun is hanging loosely from his hands.

“Morning,” Emerson grins.

“Fuck you.”

His grin doesn’t falter. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, dog. Didn’t think it’d take _this_ long, but Cage says the wait would be better, anyway. Should bring more money in.”

Clarke tries to get herself up, but her muscles feel like static and lead. Everything still sort of feels underwater and so she entertains herself by glaring up at Emerson and fantasying how she’s going to kill him one day. It’ll definitely be long. And slow. Maybe as a wolf, maybe not—some things a _person_ has to do themselves, can’t hide behind fangs and claws. She wants him to _feel_ it, anyway. To look her right in the eyes and know how it feels to have everything taken from you. To have that glimpse of hope ripped right from your hands.

He allows her a whole whopping two minutes of getting the feeling in her muscles back before snatching her arm.

“Show time, mongrel,” he says gleefully, which if Clarke wasn’t already worried before about what he’s got planning she sure as _shit_ is now.

It’s probably going to be a dragon or something equally horrendous. God, maybe _two_ dragons. One for each arm it can tear her into two for. She tries resisting as he roughly hauls her up and drags her down the familiar hall but it doesn’t really work. The light shining at the end makes her almost want to shield her eyes, the harsh contrast against the dark too fast, too quick.

She can already hear the crowd cheering and yelling.

Clarke tries to shake her head of the residual numbness as Emerson forces her forward. They stop at the gate that doesn’t start opening till Emerson steps up and bangs his fist against it, moves back as the metal grinds and groans in response to being chained upwards. She blinks the spots out of her eyes, frowning while looking out across the arena, trying to see what’s waiting on the other end. She can’t hear any roaring or snarling, which is… _hopefully_ a good sign.

The gate opens and Emerson shoves her forward.

It slams down a second later, like always, and like always Clarke immediately spins around to lunge back for him. He flinches back before he can stop himself, but it’s already too late. The gate’s closed and she’s back where she always lands. She kicks at the thick metal, anyway. “You going to uncuff me, or have I lost even the privileges to that?”

He glares at her, jaw tensing but still, he comes forward, gestures impatiently with his hand for her to do same. Clarke cautiously does so and holds her wrists out the closest she can to the gate. Emerson reaches with the key through, twists it free so the cuffs slip off and _thud_ into the sandy ground.

“Why’d you cuff me?” Clarke asks, because despite it all Emerson’s never found it prudent to do that before.

He jerks his chin over her shoulder. “In case you saw him before you were in.”

Clarke spins around. The gate has opened on the other side too, except the monster that comes out does so on timid legs, eyes-wide and glancing frantically around to the arena and the crowd and the lights. It feels like the entire world screeches to a halt for a second, where her entire body just _stops_ —she doesn’t breathe, doesn’t move, doesn’t do _anything_.

It’s a man. Short scruffy black hair, scared eyes, fit but not towering.

What matters is that when he sees her he sniffs the air, in the exact same way Clarke does.

He’s a werewolf.

Cage snatches a hold of the microphone and does his usual spiel to ramp up the crowd, but the only thing Clarke does is force herself to breathe and glance back to Emerson. “You’ll die for this,” she promises, nothing giving in her voice.

For the first time the absolute certainty in her voice seems to finally unnerve him. And he steps back, has to swallow it all down.

Clarke looks back to the werewolf.

He’s still backed into his corner, holding his arms and looking so _scared_ that she doesn’t know what to do. “It’s going to be alright,” she tries, approaches slow with one hand raised, trying to show she means peace, that it doesn’t have to go like this.

But he’d been listening to Cage the entire it seems like. To what he was saying, that this was a _fight_ , a fight to the death. That only one of them is walking out. And he meets her eyes for one last instant and she knows what he’s going to do.

“ _Don’t._ ”

He’s already on his knees, a snout pushing through his face.

Clarke hisses and backs off. It doesn’t take him too long to shift, only about a minute or so. His body jerks rough and hard and he curls over himself, black fur sprouting all across his pale skin while his head stays bowed, his ears reaching higher and _sharper_ while his hands dig into the sand, fingers snap and bend into a different shape. When it’s over and there’s a shaggy black wolf standing there he has to rip himself out of the shirt that’d pushed out with him.

Once he’s free he snarls at her, bares rows of deadly teeth that keep slinging trails of salvia over the ground. There’s this second, though—a second where he stops, confused.

It’s because she didn’t shift with him. It’s probably why he thought to risk it, because he _assumed_ she’d do the sane thing and shift too. But instead Clarke just backs up slowly, breathlessly watching the wolf that eyes her with visible confusion, before finally that gets wiped away too and he stalks forward.

“Don’t make me do this,” Clarke begs, watching him speed up for her.

The werewolf doesn’t listen.

She only manages to dodge his attempts a handful of times before one finally sticks. And then she’s flat on the ground, the werewolf on top of her and snapping his teeth wildly, his head shaking violently back of forth, trying to throw her hands off his muzzle, the ones digging in so tightly blood is slipping down the sides of his snout, staining his teeth.

The one rule she’s always had is to never shift. Lexa asked her about it once and she’d told her it was because werewolf pelts are priceless, can get _serious_ money if you know the right people and she refuses to let these parasites leech a single extra cent off her corpse. But the _real_ reason, the real cause: it’s about what she owes.

She owes it to those she’ll kill in here to show her face. To hide behind nothing. It’s not really about honour but _guilt_. To tell them that she sees them, she knows. That none of them chose to be here, to be in this cage or to have this blood on their hands. But they are. _She_ is.

Clarke stares up at the rabid werewolf above her, blinks back the tears in her eyes.

And she realises that she just can’t.

If there will be one time where she will hide, it’ll be now.

So Clarke throws him off.

-

It’d only been the night before, that Lexa and her had been talking.

Maybe it’s ironic. Maybe it’s that even chaos lines up every now and again.

Her leg keeps twitching and no matter how much Clarke tries to make the damn thing _still_ her body refuses to listen. It spreads further, though, first in her hands, then her arm, then her leg and _now_ even her neck once in a while, a twitch to the left. It’s not the first time this has happened either, though usually it passes quickly. The minute of restless twitching is annoying but it’s not permanent, so she’s learnt to tune it out.

It’s especially bad tonight, though. And Lexa is finally noticing it for being more than nothing.

“Are you okay?” Lexa asks, genuine concern in her voice.

Clarke tries to be annoyed, but it doesn’t really work. She knows why Lexa is concerned—she’s shaking like a damn drug addict going cold turkey. And Lexa has _eyes_. “Yeah, I’m—I’m fine. Just, I’ve never gone this long before. It never gets this bad.”

Lexa looks even more confused. “Long before what?”

Clarke huffs a tired laugh. “Shifting.”

Lexa blinks slow, understanding dawning. Still, Clarke catches the notes of lingering curiosity and worry and figures it can’t hurt to try explain.

“It’s like…” Clarke frowns, biting her lip. “You know when you sit on your leg for too long, and it goes to sleep?”

Lexa just stares at her for a long beat before slowly saying, “I'm a vampire, Clarke. My blood doesn’t run.”

Clarke’s eyes snap down to hers. “Wait, seriously? That doesn’t happen for you? Like at all?” Lexa shakes her head, clearly amused at her incredulous reaction. Her eyes go at wide at the realisation. “Is _that_ why you can meditate for so long and have no problem? You can just stay there, sitting on your leg for hours and hours and then stand in a heartbeat after, totally fine?”

Lexa nods again.

Clarke considers this. “I hate you.”

Lexa doesn’t look the slightest bit convinced. “You were saying?” she says instead, bringing her back on track.

“I was _saying_... okay, fine, forget what I said. It’s just, like a muscle you have to stretch, basically. You don’t do it for a while but still keep going and something doesn’t feel right, like it’s all building up inside you.”

Lexa’s concern deepens. “Can it kill you?”

“Nah. You can bury the wolf all you want, but it’ll surface, eventually. _Maybe_ it could kill you, but you’d shift before it did.” Clarke shrugs casually. “You can hold it off for a long while, though. If you’re desperate enough. My mother’s little brother—he once went a whole _year_ without shifting once. Even on full moons, he just—” she falters here, has to swallow thickly and ignore the sudden spike of her heart rate, “—he’d, he’d do it like you did. For me. Would just sit out in the moonlight but he’d hold back the urge.”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

Clarke grins. “My mom dared him that he couldn’t.”

This is the first time she hears Lexa laugh, _really_ laugh.

It’s the memory she holds onto as she leaps for the cage bars.

“Don’t shoot me,” she snarls at the guard dog on the other side, his gun snapping to her immediately. Her voice must be commanding enough, though, because he listens, shoots a nervous glance to the other guard standing with him but lowers his weapon, doesn’t pull the trigger.

Clarke ignores him and only exhales forcefully through her nose as she digs the sole of her foot against the cold bars, using it as a leverage to start climbing up them. Her core strains and her arms keep shaking but she _forces_ her stupid body to cooperate. Her goal is to get the cage bars running horizontally at the top. It’s too high for the werewolf to reach, not without the hands that he very much doesn’t have anymore.

The werewolf recovers faster than she’d like, though.

She’s barely a few metres off the ground when then he’s right _there_ below her, snarling and pounces upwards.

She cries out before she can stop it. His jaw clamps around her calf, rows of horrible teeth cutting right to the bone. The crowd erupts at the first sign of blood and Clarke just curses, tries to shake the werewolf off her leg, but he only digs his teeth in _further_. She accidently drops down a foot from the effort and the werewolf gets his hind legs back on solid ground. It gives him better leverage, better weight to pull her down with.

In the end she has to sacrifice a hand, loses some more inches of height so that she can look down below and bend her knee—the leg _without_ a wolf clinging onto it—and then stomp at his muzzle. His snarling and growling gets worse and it _hurts_ when he shakes his head violently, trying to tear her damn leg off, but without the full strength of his legs it only takes a few more frantic kicks to his snout until finally his teeth rip free and then he’s falling, falling, falling.

Pain ripples up her leg instantly. There’s some horrible burning agony festering in her calf and she doesn’t even fucking dare to look down at the no doubt horrific mess her leg is. It makes it that much worse, when she rushes to climb again, only able to use one foot as leverage instead of two. The werewolf scrambles back up so he’s standing, except even with a sprint and springing his hind legs—he misses her, teeth snapping at the air just below her heel.

And then she’s there, hands wrapping around the roof bars until she’s hanging in the air, the werewolf so far below her, her entire body screaming from the strain, and all of that sweat runs like a river down her back, blood streams right down her mauled calf, hits the eyes of the monster snapping beneath her.

“Last one,” Clarke pants to herself, breathing so hard her throat hurts and her lungs feel like a bag of glass.

She adjusts the clammy grip of hands around the metal above and then throws her legs forward, getting into a rhythm of swinging back and forth until the momentum is enough that her foot almost grazes the metal bars and she snaps her heel out, hooks her ankle around the nearest bar. Once it’s secure she pushes it further, almost getting her knee around the bend. It’s such a _relief_ to be able to share the weight of herself between more than just her arms that she can’t stop the relieved breath of air, is able to use the better balance to then hook her damaged leg behind the metal too.

That one hurts far more. A flash of agonising pain shocks her system and she yells, almost full on _slips_ and loses her grip. The werewolf below goes wild at that, frantically spins and jumps below her. But she holds on. And this time she very _carefully_ distributes her weight, so less is being held up by her weak leg.

The crowd is screaming so loud it almost feels like she’s deaf. Most of them are furious at the clear avoidance of a fight and are demanding for the entertainment they’d paid for. Worse, when Clarke chances a glance downwards she can see the guard dogs are getting antsy too, are slowing readying their guns, aiming them for her.

No fucking patience.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke whispers, screwing her eyes shut. There’s next to no chance the werewolf can hear her, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s not about being heard. “I’m sorry.”

She’d told Lexa that going so long without shifting is like sitting in one position for too long. It’s something that needs a _release_ , to wake the sleeping part of the body up. What she didn’t mention, though, is that when it’s been so long, it means that _when_ you do finally give in it all happens so quick like opening the floodgates after a storm.

It starts in her hands, the extremities. The whole reason she’d even climbed the whole way up here—it’s so that when her fingers start bending and snapping and shifting, she doesn’t yet fall, because her _legs_ are hooked around the metal, holding her up. The familiar burning lights up her insides and she wants to curse at the pain of it, but her throat’s not right anymore, her _mouth_ isn’t because now there’s a snout pushing through, and her hair is shrinking in as rest of it sprouts along her skin like fur, the muscles under her skin rippling and stretching.

She manages to hold on for most of it. Except then the heels of her feet keep pushing further and _further_ and it just takes that second after she loses her the grip on her hands, has to let go because her arms won’t bend the same with the new shape, the different muscle, and her fingers are all pushing closer, making paws, deadly claws shining at the ends of them.

Finally the joints and bones change in her ankle and she can’t bend it the same way anymore.

And she falls.

When she hits the ground she’s all wolf.

The crowd _erupts_. The other werewolf, he only gets a couple few bites and snaps in before she’s flipped onto all fours and hastily backs up with a feral snarl and her black lips all peeled back, exposing her gums, her teeth. The werewolf backs off too and they circle each other. Neither wants to be the one to lunge first and dare an opening.

Her back leg is dragging, though. And she doesn’t want to draw this out. This whole thing’s already been hell enough. She waits until his attention gets side-tracked for a heartbeat by a particular loud shout from someone in the audience, some man that crosses over that line around the cage that the crowd isn’t allowed to step past, because it passes the theoretical threshold of where an arm could reach through the bars. A nearby guard dog grabs the man by the arm, pushes him back with a sharp warning.

The werewolf’s ears flick in that direction. His eyes don’t shift off her, but Clarke knows his attention in that second is briefly divided. She flashes forward and while he snaps his teeth out and tries to throw her off he doesn’t _succeed_ and suddenly they’re in a violent tangled mess of fur and fangs and claws, growling and snarling monstrously the whole time.

Those teeth get onto her bad leg again and bite hard enough to crush the bone, the _snap_ of it jolting in a blinding flash of pain. But _her_ teeth get a solid hold into his shoulders and tear a chunk out. It’s so close to his neck that he instinctively lurches back in some attempt to protect the soft flesh, except it’s already all too late and as they brawl and claw into each other Clarke twists her neck over his, and _clamps_ her jaw into that spot just below his head, severing his spine.

He’s limp in her jaws barely a few seconds later.

She waits anyway, in case it’s a trick. But his blood keeps filling up her mouth and when she shakes her head in a test he doesn’t do anything, doesn’t twitch or resist. Gently, so _gently_ , she opens her mouth and lets him go. He collapses into the sand like a sack of bricks. He doesn’t get back up.

Clarke slowly steps back and stares at him. Just staring and staring and staring.

The death horn booms through the enclosed space. It sounds even worse with the wolf’s ears, even more like it’ll rupture her eardrums. She doesn’t react, not until those same ears flick at hearing the gates crank back open and she glances up.

A pack of guards carefully creep their way in, tranq rifles aimed and primed on her.

They’re probably expecting her to run for them and tear their throats out. And while she _wants_ to do that what she actually does is back up, plant herself over the body of the dead werewolf and hunch down, daring any of the fuckers to come near him. The guards hesitate, watching her in confusion.

From the other end of the arena is the clean up crew. She’d seen them before, when they came to haul that harpy out that one time. They try to near her but jump back at the violent snap of teeth. They start yelling, the other guard dogs too, but Clarke holds her ground and keeps snarling, keeps protecting.

All at once there’s a burst of stabbings into her neck. She twists around and honestly, she’s not even that surprised at the sight of Emerson there who’d clearly shoved his way to the front when the guard dogs were too busy arguing. She meets his eyes from across the sand and sees his riflescope still aiming down directly towards her, just in case.

But then the world tips over sideways and everything slips away.

-

The first time she killed a werewolf she was twenty-two.

Finn is nervous. He’s been that way these past few days, which is weird but not _weird_. Clarke just figures it’s the regular paranoia all their kind seemed to be riddled with. He gets distant, though, doesn’t even stop by the bar just to say _hey_ anymore, let alone come upstairs and spend the night. It’s confusing and leaves her wondering a little if she’d done something wrong. Which doesn’t make sense, either, because they’ve been… fine. _Good_ , even. If Clarke could actually get past the whole admittance of feelings thing.

It wasn’t exactly one of her strengths.

She was about to finally ask Finn what the hell was up with his recent avoidance tactics but then he was back again, that night. Though he somehow looked even _more_ nervous than usual. “What’s up with you?” Clarke asks with a confused smile, reaching out to loosely tangle their hands.

But he pulls his own back before their fingers can touch. “Can you meet me tomorrow? I’ve—I’ve got something I want to show you.”

“Your flirting’s getting worse.”

Finn laughs, but it’s strained and off-kilter. Clarke frowns, that nervous flutter in her belly worsening and crawling right up her spine, closing around the bone like an icy fist. “You’ve always hated my flirting,” he says. His grin still doesn’t look right.

“Talk to me,” Clarke says instead. She tries to reach out again and Finn sidesteps that too.

“I’ve gotta go, Jim’s been on my ass lately.”

Jim is his boss. Why Finn thought a werewolf working on a farm is a good idea is beyond her. Every day he complains to her just how _cruel_ it is to have that five-star meal on legs just watching him while he can’t do a damn thing, day in day out, and yet Finn still turns up to help run the farm anyway, ignores the cautious stares all the animals give him.

He avoids the horses especially. Most of the stock, they don’t trust him but they generally let him move around, fill up their feeds and roll hay barrels past them.

The horses, though.

He gets too close and they’ll come out hooves slashing.

Her hand is still reaching out even as Finn gives her a tight smile and almost trips over his feet in his hast to get out the front door. Slowly, she lets her hand fall back to her side. “It’s fine,” she says, just for herself. Something still burns in her chest but she turns around, finds a table to wipe so her hands are busy. “It’s going to be fine.”

It’s not.

The next day, Finn tells her to meet at that spot just at the edge of town, where the woods start creeping in. It’s late enough that Clarke figures he’s hoping for a run together, to blitz through the trees. And considering the day she’s had where a particular sleazebag didn’t seem to understand the whole _personal space_ concept and Clarke only barely restrained from doing something that would get her fired—yeah, a run is _exactly_ what she needs. Something to burn off the pent up energy in her.

Clarke finds him pacing between two trees. She smiles, but it wipes away when his head whips up at sensing her approach and the first thing she sees, the first emotion that flashes across his face, is _fear_.

She’s about to ask why, except then from behind something comes prowling out from the shadows.

A werewolf. A _blond_ werewolf. One with hair that Clarke recognises instantly.

Her eyes snap up to his. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I’m sorry,” Finn says, and he’s _crying_ , tears all streaming down his face as he trips back. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m _sorry_.”

Diana starts growling. Clarke backs up, hastily looking around but there’s nowhere to go, nowhere to run. There’s no time to shift—no _place_ for it—and so the only thing she can do is curse viciously to herself as Diana stalks forward, rows and rows of horrible teeth bared and stringing saliva.

“I didn’t _know_ ,” Clarke snaps to Diana, but Diana clearly can’t give two shits for that. The thing about revenge is that it’s never shallow, and Clarke knows damn well this isn’t just for that one time—it’s for her mother, too, it’s for every slight against her, everything that’s ever gone wrong. There’s no talking her out of that.

It’s probably worse that she’s Jake’s blood, too. She’s the combination of the two people Diana hates most. Clarke could buy her a house on the islands and she’d still want to rip her throat out.

Clarke bares her teeth and glares up at her Finn, even though her eyes are burning with betrayal, her stomach twisting and lurching. “What did I do? What did I _do_ to you?”

Finn tries to speak but he can’t.

Luckily for him, though, Diana finally lunges forward and he doesn’t have to start sputtering excuses.

Clarke tries running. It doesn’t work—not when she’s like _this_ —and so it’s not really a surprise when Diana easily catches up to her and takes her into the dirt ground. She snaps out for her neck, but Clarke is expecting this and shoves her arm out to protect it, yelling at the ripple of pain as Diana bites into her arm instead, rips her head back and forth to tear the flesh.

She can barely see. It’s not because of the blood, or the rabid werewolf above her that’s snarling and growling and intent on fulfilling a promise from decades ago; it’s for the tears that keep getting in her eyes, blurring the world.

What fucking business does a werewolf have being in love?

Of course this is how it ends.

“Finn,” Clarke chokes out anyway, because she’s never once done well with following a rule. She catches his wide eyes from ahead where he’s backed himself into a tree. “ _Finn_.”

Diana finally bites hard enough that Clarke shouts in pain and rips her ravaged arm out of her teeth, allowing that dangerous opening where the soft flesh of her throat isn’t protected anymore. Real, paralysing fear flashes through her and even though Clarke tries to twist out or brace again to _protect_ it’s already too late and Diana doesn’t waste the chance.

The last thing she sees is the bloodied white flash of teeth.

But then Finn is shouting something and Clarke is only halfway through wondering if death really is meant to be some dreamless sleep like everyone says, when Diana gets roughly shoved off her and slams into the ground, tumbling over the grass. Clarke’s eyes bulge but already she’s lurched back up to her feet and ignores how Diana does the same, except she looks to Finn first, to his _betrayal_.

Clarke is already moving.

She lunges for her and this time it’s Clarke that’s above her. Diana snarls and bites wildly from below, claws slashing and hooking into the flesh of her shoulder, cutting down her chest. It’s not enough to stop the claws pushing out of Clarke’s _own_ hands, though, the ones that are now tearing into Diana’s throat instead.

Clarke still has to wrestle her for a solid minute even if half of Diana’s throat is missing. More of her front gets ripped by flailing claws and that’s only mostly because she’d rather get slashed than not keep all her focus into holding Diana’s head down, so those teeth can’t get into her. The werewolf struggles below her, but the more time passes the more the growls filter out into whimpers, then into whines, and suddenly it’s these horrible, quiet yips, like she’s trying to speak, like she wants those last words that only humans figured out how to have.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke pants, saying it for her.

The claws hooked into her flesh go slack.

Clarke watches as Diana falls still below her. Her entire body hurts and there’s gashes crisscrossed over her front that means she’s bleeding a dangerous amount—but she’ll be fine, she know she will. It’d be too easy to die like this. Too fair.

She stumbles up to her feet. When she turns around, Finn is still there.

Renewed tears well up in his eyes.

He can’t stop her in time for her to rush forward and shove him into a tree.

“Give me one fucking reason why I shouldn’t kill you now,” Clarke seethes, bloodied and tired, just so damn _tired_.

His eyes glisten. “Please,” he whispers.

Clarke stares at him, her hands fisting the neck of his shirt. But she can’t. She knows that. Clarke stares, her own eyes tearing up until she pushes him back roughly and steps back, baring her teeth.

“You piece of fucking shit.”

“She gave me money,” Finn says quickly, _desperately_ , trying to make her understand. “You have to understand. You—you get it, right? You’d do the same, wouldn’t you? I know you would, we _all_ would.”

But Clarke just looks at him in pained disgust. “This is how it’s always going to be, isn’t it? When it comes to it—when it _matters_ —you’ll always look out for yourself first.”

“Don’t you?” Finn retorts, honest confusion in his voice.

Clarke just stares at him and wonders where it all went wrong.

Slowly, she glances back to Diana’s dead body behind her. Her jaw clenches and when she meets Finn’s eyes again she draws herself up. “I guess that’s where we’re different. This is what you’re going to do. I’m giving you one chance to run—you’ll take this care of this body, you’re going to clean this up, and then you’re going to _run_ and you’re never going to let me see you fucking again.”

“Clarke,” Finn breathes, blinking rapidly.

She ignores him. “Don’t mistake my mercy for forgiveness,” she warns harshly, and the wolf burns in her before she can stop it. Her iris blurs into a murky yellow. “If I ever see you again, you’re dead. You’re fucking _dead_ , Finn.”

And then she’s twisting on her heel and storming out before he can stop it.

He doesn’t try, though. She can feel his eyes glued to her back but that’s the extent he tries. Some lines you can’t step back over. The adrenaline starts to sputter out of her and exhaustion crashes like a tidal wave, makes the slashes still bleeding down her chest hurt twice as much.

Eventually it gets too much and she falls to her knees, her throat feeling like it’s choking her from the inside.

It’s not for tears.

And when the wolf breaks out it almost comes like a relief.

-

Lexa has always figured herself as someone hard to be surprise, as being alive for centuries tends to stack enough experiences it almost becomes impossible to care about the latest addition to the chaos—but, what _does_ surprise her is the sudden and visceral reaction that spasms out in her dead chest when the heavy metal door is shoved open and Emerson comes storming in.

While dragging a limp werewolf across the floor by its neck.

Lexa refuses to show just how badly the image affects her, but even she can’t stop the way her eyes widen and her entire body stiffens up almost violently. Stupidly, her immediate thought is that it’s Clarke’s _dead_ body that’s being lugged back in, though she scraps that thought quickly.

There’s no logical reason they’d drag her corpse back here. Plus, Emerson is _seething_ with fury, snapping at his men to open the cage and then stomping in the moment the guards hastily throw it open, dragging Clarke in by the ruff of her neck and carelessly dropping her on the floor, not even on the bed.

Emerson only gets this mad when Clarke survives.

His hands are shaking at his sides, yet all he can do is clench his fists and glare down at the unconscious werewolf below him. He moves back, never once taking his eyes off as another guard comes forward, closes and locks the cage again. The guards all back off and eagerly escape out the room. Emerson’s fury tends to blur beyond what it’s suppose to; it’s not _who_ pissed him off, it’s whose the fool that approaches him next.

He just keeps staring at her, though.

Clarke’s breathing is slow and even. It’s probably the most peaceful Lexa’s ever seen her sleep in here. Lexa cranes her neck slightly, and she can see one of her hind legs is bleeding and the fur’s all matted and bloody, but the tranquiliser they’d obviously used seems to be enough to make her mind forget about that for a few blissful hours, lets her sleep and sleep.

Emerson spends a full minute standing there. Slowly, his fists unravel, and something unloads off his shoulders too and instead of that familiar rage it’s just confusion, such honest _confusion_ that pulls his face into a frown like he really can’t figure out how Clarke keeps surviving whatever is thrown at her, why she doesn’t just let the world tame her because it’s _easier_ that way, it hurts so much less.

“Mad dog,” he finally whispers, and then without even sparing Lexa a glance he’s storming out the room too.

Lexa’s eyes slide back to Clarke. She’s never seen her shifted, before. It’s the one thing that Clarke has been treating as sacred. The only serious injury seems to be the mess at her leg, though there’s still blood stained and congealed all along her muzzle, on her teeth. The tranq must be strong—she’s drooling some red-blurred puddled, from where her mouth hasn’t closed quite right.

But her ribs expand and fall, and she keeps breathing. Keeps sleeping.

The big bad wolf, alright.

It’s a whole hour later before signs of life start showing. Lexa tries to go back to meditating and fails terribly because anytime she closes her eyes, tries to focus the world out—anxiety immediately wells up in her and her eyes creak right back open and check over to make sure Clarke isn’t dying over there. Even though it’s stupid. Because she’s fine, obviously. If _Emerson_ isn’t concerned then she sure as hell shouldn’t be.

And yet.

An hour later, though, Clarke starts twitching. It starts in her paws, small twitches that garner Lexa’s attention instantly. Then it climbs up higher, up her leg till the whole thing is twitching, too, except _that_ makes her injured one pull at something and then Clarke’s head is shooting up, a pained and surprised yip bursting out that Lexa _never_ thought she’d hear.

It still takes her a minute. Clarke blinks slowly, glassy eyes rolling around the room; first eyeing the mess of her hind leg, then the blood pooled near her flank, and then further, looking to the rest of the room and realising where she is before finally, her eyes settle on Lexa, who probably looks far too relieved.

Clarke stares at her for a long while.

She doesn’t even bother the effort to hold her head up and lets it plop sideways onto the floor, those yellow eyes all wolf and without a spec of blue in them. But Lexa can see it anyway. It’s the same look that Clarke always watches her with. Like the world’s already ended and gone up in flames, but that’s alright, really, because Lexa’s sitting with her through it.

“I never thought I’d see you shifted,” Lexa says into the thick silence.

Clarke grumbles quietly.

Lexa smiles to herself, shaking her head.

Clarke ignores her, though she still at least manages the effort to lift her head again. It’s only so she can reach back and lick at the nasty bite marks crushed around her back leg. The process doesn’t look painless, but still Clarke keeps up the repetitive licks, trying to speed up the healing along, hoping wolf’s salvia will mean something.

Emerson doesn’t come back in until another whole hour later. He shows up this time with another guard trailing behind him who’s balancing a tray in his hand, but they both freeze and look genuinely shocked to see that Clarke _still_ hasn’t shifted back yet. She’s stopped licking at her wounds and has resolved to pacing slow, menacing laps inside her cage, her ears always pointed towards the door no matter what way she’s facing.

When Emerson finally appears again, Clarke stills too. Watches him.

“Thought you hated being a dog,” Emerson mutters, when he recovers from his surprise. He smirks. “Change of heart?”

Clarke’s lips peel away from her teeth.

Emerson just shakes his head. With a bored wave he signals the guard to go approach her, kneeling down and, after hesitating another beat, the guard eventually swallows his nerves and slides open the hatch and pushes the tray through. Clarke intensely eyes the whole process but she doesn’t make a move. She inches forward to sniff at the meal prepared, before pulling away, goes back to watching Emerson.

The food had clearly been prepared for a _human_ Clarke, though. It even has a knife and fork.

Emerson frowns, but Lexa only has to watch Clarke another moment before realising that she’s not _watching_ Emerson—she’s trying to get his attention, to make him understand. To ask what her throat refuses to say.

“Get her a change of clothes,” Lexa speaks up.

Emerson’s gaze snaps to hers. Lexa merely raises a brow. “What, does the killer feel _modest_ now, does she?”

“How do you think Cage’s wallet is feeling after tonight, Emerson?”

Any smirking is wiped off his face and he grinds his teeth. He rips his eyes away, glaring down at Clarke whose gone back to pacing again, now, though her stare never shifts off him even as she rounds back and forth, centuries of legends being answered just in the look of her eyes alone.

Emerson sighs through his nose. “Go.”

The guard glances to him, confused. But he listens and trips out the room as quick as possible.

He’s back minutes later with a pile of clothes in his hands and panting heavily.

Clarke slows to a stop, her ears flicking towards him. Emerson only gives the guard a passing glance as he tentatively walks by him and readjusts his grip on the small stack of clothes in his hands. He swallows, inches forward like there’s a mine under his every step closer and he’s just waiting to be blown. Clarke stills noticeably.

Lexa knows what’s going to happen only right before it does.

The guard almost makes it. But when they want to be, werewolves are _fast_. They’re unforgiving and merciless. It’s only a split second that his hand brushes into Clarke’s cage, and even though he rips his arm back just as fast, hastily stuffs the clothes through the cage bar gaps, it’s too late and Clarke’s teeth are already clamped into the man’s hand.

It’s not a secure enough to get a solid hold, but that doesn’t really matter. The guard manages to tear his hand free and stumble back except already, _already_ he’s screaming, collapsing down to his knees, clutching at his bitten hand. The one that’s now infected with wolf blood.

This all happens in that split second. Emerson reacts a heartbeat later by ripping the handgun from his holster and snapping its sight right on Clarke. Lexa bursts to her feet, while Clarke merely growls right back at him, the guard’s blood still dripping off her teeth, and Emerson breathes hard and fast through his nose, his jaw looking seconds from cracking.

“Emerson,” Lexa says slowly, raising a placating hand and trying to approach, even with the metal between them.

The guard keeps screaming. Emerson’s hands flex around the gun, his entire body trembling like it’s taking everything in him to stop his finger from squeezing that tiny, tiny inch. Lexa’s got no doubt the bullets in there are pure silver. Clarke meets the seething mess of his eyes without flinching, stares right back up the gun barrel to him.

She growls harder, the hackles rising up on her back, sets her front legs like _daring_ him to give in.

“ _Emerson_ ,” Lexa snaps, when he still doesn’t lower the gun.

“You think you’re so fucking above it all,” he spits down to Clarke, a snarl trapped in his lip. His guard stays curled on the floor, moaning and begging and dying. Emerson’s grip tightens even worse around the gun. “But you’re like the goddamn rest of us. You’re _worse_. That dog you killed that today? Atom. His name was Atom. He was twenty-three.”

Clarke’s growling falters.

Emerson grins, getting exactly what he wanted. “That’s right. It’s his birthday in two weeks, you know that? It says so on his ID. I’ve always wondered, do your kind all fuck around in some stupid pack together? Or is it just you? Is it just you, and your family: the mother that’ll never see her son again or the brother that’s not a twin anymore? Do you bury yours the same way we do?”

It feels like it takes a century, but Emerson lowers the gun.

He doesn’t need it anymore. There’s nothing a bullet could do compared to this.

“Give me a list,” Emerson says quietly. “I’ll use the money from his pelt to buy whatever you want, dog. It’s your money anyway, right? You earned it.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before he merely turns around and grabs the guard still whimpering on the floor by the elbow, pulling him up, takes the guard’s arm and swings it around his shoulder so he can help him out the room. He mutters something, offering reassurances that it’ll be alright, it’ll all soon be over, and while the guard nods in relief Lexa can see how Emerson’s hands turn white-knuckled around the gun.

Even Emerson knows there’s no cure for a werewolf bite. There’s only one way out of it.

The door slams closed.

Lexa slowly steps back. She blinks, doesn’t really know to _do_ except to glance over to Clarke who still looks to be staring out at the door. But she understands, now. A werewolf. He had Clarke kill a werewolf.

No wonder she shifted, really.

“I’m sorry,” Lexa says softly.

Clarke doesn’t offer anything back.

-

Three days pass before she finally does it.

Mostly, it’s because of something her mother said. That the whole point of shifting; it’s a restart, it’s emptying the bucket clean and then filling it right back up with something completely different. And while _usually_ it works out fine and the body always knows what to do, has done it all a thousand times before in a thousand different generations, there’s always exceptions, hiccups in the mechanisms.

Broken bones, for one. Shifting _is_ breaking the bones. It’s restarting the whole system.

Which means that if you shift _with_ broken bones, the healing gets restarted, too, and now you’re right back at square one. And Clarke isn’t particularly looking forward to inflicting herself back to that fiery pain, to that moment those teeth had crushed her leg. It’s only putting off the inevitable, though. Plus her whole survival at the current time sort of _deeply_ depends on her ability to fight.

This is mostly why she’s been putting this off. The other reason is smaller, and far more important. Far more painful.

Still.

The grinding of bones feels a hundred times worse. It’s like sand in gears and unlike the smooth way she’s used to pulling back up to two legs, instead Clarke ends up lying on the floor, cursing and spitting, her whole body trembling, barely has the strength to push herself up on her elbows.

“Goddamn it,” Clarke pants, not even really sure whose she’s cursing. Maybe everything.

Lexa doesn’t answer apart from an acknowledging hum. Clarke frowns a little, but when she glances up she sees that Lexa’s eyes are firmly stuck to the opposite direction of her cage. And despite the phantom spasms she can still feel in her muscles and the renewed fire eating at her leg, Clarke can’t help but chuckle, even through her exhaustion.

“Never thought a vampire would be a prude, huh?”

“I will politely elect to ignore that comment.”

Clarke grins, happy to just get a response.

It slips off when she manoeuvres herself so she’s sitting, leaning her weight into the cage bars with a groan. That at least garners Lexa’s concern, but Lexa glances just once to her in worry before she’s just as fast ripping her eyes away and resuming their goal to drill into the wall. Considering how intensely she’s staring that poor stone down, she just might succeed.

“Don’t need to be so nervous,” Clarke says, arching a brow even as she leans forward, snags the pile of clothes and drags them closer to her. “You can look. Matter of fact, I’d invite you to.”

Lexa continues to glare into the wall.

Clarke sighs, though her smile remains. “Fine. Just know that you’re going to be kicking yourself for _days_ after this for rejecting my one-time offer. A very _generous_ one-time offer, might I add. You’re not getting a better one. That, I can guarantee.”

Even side on Clarke can see the way Lexa’s jaw flexes dangerously. “You’re not dragging me down with you, Clarke.”

“What about down _on_ you?”

Lexa’s shoulders rise, breathing in and in and in, and then fall, exhaling out all of it forcefully through her nose.

“Fine,” Clarke grumbles, at least reaching forward and beginning the process of getting dressed. She leaves the pants for last, though—that is _not_ going to be painless. “I thought vampires were meant to be seductive creatures? Aren’t you supposed to seduce me? I don’t feel seduced.”

“We don’t _seduce_ ,” Lexa corrects, frowning now.

“Well, that’s certainly obvious to me now.”

Lexa sighs again. Clarke lets the quiet sink back in between them and focuses on pulling her shirt over her head. The only piece of clothing left is the pants now and Clarke cringes just thinking about it. This won’t end well.

“Don’t be worried if I scream,” she mutters to Lexa, not looking up, and then after counting down to three in her head finally she bites the bullet and gets her feet through the pant legs. Lexa’s head twitches, wanting to glance back and probably ask her what the hell she’s on about, but it’s already too late and Clarke shouts at the blinding flash of pain that shoots up her leg.

The process goes about as well as she expected it to.

When it’s over and she’s finished tugging that last inch of her pants up to her hips, sweat is building up on her back and she’s breathing hard enough her throat stings. She’s also resolved to never move her leg again. Well, not until her stupid body can do its stupid healing. Honestly, what’s even the fucking point of having this supernatural healing if it can’t even let her get a pair of pants on?

But it’s done, at least. To be safe she rolls the pant leg up, though, so the wound isn’t covered. She’ll have to yell at someone to get some bandages, but it’ll probably be fine. Probably.

“You can look now,” Clarke says, letting her head tip back into the cold bars, concentrates on breathing carefully through the pain. “Can’t promise I won’t still flash you, though.”

Lexa’s body looks like a wire seconds from snapping. Her nails dig furiously into her knees, like she’s barely holding on but there’s a pit of stakes beneath her. Slowly, though, Lexa turns her head back to look at her so _tentatively_ that Clarke is almost offended by the trust Lexa clearly does not possess in her.

When she sees Clarke _is_ in fact clothed and wasn’t lying, her whole body melts with a sigh of relief.

Clarke shoots her a flat look. “You know, if you think my body so grotesque you can’t even look at it, you can just say so. No need to be so damn dramatic.”

“I don’t think that,” Lexa says quickly.

Way too quickly.

Clarke’s brow raises right up to her hairline, but it’s the devious grin that tugs at her mouth that pushes it too far.

“You’re insufferable,” Lexa grumbles, scowling.

“Sure am,” Clarke says cheerfully.

Lexa sighs, eyes shifting out to hers and looking sorely unimpressed. The warmth still fills up her chest, though, because Clarke can see the way that Lexa obviously wants so bad to smile, but she’s _made_ herself this goddamn bed and she sure as hell is going to lie in it. Clarke’s grin softens into something more real and—it _hits_ , like a punch right to the gut.

She sure got seduced, alright.

As if it was ever even a question.

-

The first time it happens, she’s in her house.

Her _childhood_ house. From years and years ago, from even when her dad was still alive. This is the first thing that makes her pause, glancing around in confusion. Her brain’s a little slow on the uptake—which is already pretty weird in itself—but the whole thing is just _weird_ , anyway, because it _feels_ like her brain doesn’t even want to focus on anything. It wants to move on, to accept. Don’t worry about the fact you haven’t stepped foot in this house for a decade. Just go along with it.

“I’m dreaming,” Clarke finally whispers to herself, wide-eyed at the revelation.

She’s never been awake in her dreams before.

“Ah, _fuck_.”

Clarke jerks around at the unknown voice. A stranger is standing there with her in her childhood bedroom, jaw clenched and hands on her hips. She doesn’t recognise her face, but she remembers something a friend told her once—albeit while they were high off their ass—that there are no _real_ strangers in your dreams, they’re just the faces buried in your subconscious. That glimpse of someone you only caught as you crossed the street and briefly met eyes or that barista you smiled and thanked once.

So she relaxes, accepting this is just her brain being her brain.

What she doesn’t expect is for the stranger to curse loudly to herself.

“Be too much to hope you’re the Commander, right?” the stranger asks, rather desperately.

Clarke sighs, because of fucking _course_ even her dreams won’t stop reminding her just how doomed her heart is. “No, sorry.”

The stranger’s face falls even more. “Fuck, I knew it. She said the Commander was _brunette_. Fuck. Fuck!”

“Who are you?” Clarke says quickly, before the stranger can fall further into her downward spiral.

“Octavia,” the stranger finally answers. It takes her awhile, and when she _does_ give in it’s with a whole body sigh like if everything’s gone to shit then what’s a little more to give up on?

“I know you from somewhere?”

Octavia snorts. “Funny. This is—goddamn it I was _sure_ I got the location right. I’ve been doing this—you know how long I’ve been doing this? And how much fucking _effort_ this is? How hard it is? Every night! Every night they nag me, ‘did you do it? Did you do it?’ as if it’s the equivalent to sending a letter. Yeah, _you_ try to send a fucking letter to someone’s subconscious you’ve never even _met_ before and can only blind faith your way into reaching. It’s complete bullshit, right?”

“Sucks,” Clarke says sympathetically, despite the fact she has no idea what the fuck Octavia is talking about.

Octavia throws out her hand to her. “ _Thank you_. At least someone in this fucking prison has some manners.” Except, the mention of _prison_ seems to have something finally click for her, and Octavia’s face lightens up, hope shining there in her eyes. “Wait. _Wait_. You’re in the mountain too, right? You’re a prisoner?”

Clarke gets bored of standing and goes to sit cross-legged on her bed. She runs her hands over the soft covers, fingers trailing over cowboys and horses. It was a phase. “Dark and dank dungeon, alright.”

“But I don’t recognise you,” Octavia says quickly, a tentative grin starting to spread. “You’re not in any of the other cages here.”

Clarke thought lucid dreams were supposed to be cooler than this. Shouldn’t be flying, or something? Not stuck here having nonsensical conversations with some stranger in her childhood bedroom. Flying would be _so_ cool. Anything involving the sky she’s always had to file as a pipedream—it’s not like a _werewolf_ would do good in a plane. It just takes one second of panic at having no ground below them and suddenly it’s a claustrophobic bloodbath.

Octavia is suddenly in front of her, though. Clarke blinks at seeing the brunette now just an arms length away, almost vibrating with excitement. “ _Tell me_ ,” she demands, green eyes that look lighter than Lexa’s, more grey, all desperate and pleading. “Are you—are you a werewolf?”

“Allegedly.”

“Have you met the Commander?” Octavia follows up with immediately.

This dream sure sucks at remembering details. “Obviously,” Clarke says, narrowing her eyes. “Sort of hard to avoid a roommate.”

“I _knew_ it!” Octavia screams—full on _screams_ in happiness—and jumps up, does a hardcore fist pump in celebration. “I knew it, I fucking— _hah_! I _didn’t_ get the location wrong, just,” and her victory dies down a little here, “well, I only _sorta_ got it wrong. But that’s beside the point.”

“I literally have no idea what is happening.”

“Oh! Sorry, I—shit, sorry, I totally forget to introduce and everything. Okay, right.” Octavia straightens herself up, offers out her hand while still failing to wipe off her jittery grin. “I’m Octavia. I’m a sandman. Sorry for hijacking your dream, it’s the only way we could talk.”

Clarke stares at her.

Octavia’s grin falters, her hand slowly lowering when Clarke doesn’t reach for it. “Um… okay. So, I think you’re probably… really confused right now so I’ll just explain everything and then I’ll let you sleep. Tomorrow the Commander will sleep and—”

“Lexa doesn’t sleep.”

Octavia stops, blinks at her.

Clarke raises her brow. “She’s a vampire. They don’t need sleep.”

“She doesn’t sleep,” Octavia whispers, horror in her voice. “Oh for—no fucking _wonder_ this took so long.”

It’s only now that Clarke starts to properly consider that this insanity might not just be the regular dream variety of incoherency. Octavia had called herself a sandman, and she’s got some vague memory of her father telling her about them—more as a comfort against the nightmares she’d get as a kid. Jake always had a thing for stories and legends. It’s probably why he stuck by his girlfriend and then wife’s side, even when she revealed that animal living beneath her ribs.

Sandmen were the ones who devised up your dreams while you slept, spinning out all those tales. The crust in your eyes when you wake up—that’s the remains, the sand that they’d sprinkled over you. Neither really good, neither really evil. Dreams are dreams. The sandmen only work what they are given. Dreams can be _manipulated_ , sure, but the source can’t be fabricated, either.

Clarke slowly stands up, her pulse getting worse and worse against her ribs. “Are you real?”

Octavia scowls like she’s offended. “Are _werewolves_ real?”

“Holy—” Clarke barks a laugh, stunned and more than a little disbelieved. “This—this is _real._ You’re here in the mountain? With the others?”

Octavia nods. “And you’re the werewolf, right? The one Emerson hates?”

Figures Emerson would be bitching about her.

Clarke smiles proudly. “One and only.”

Octavia grins like she can’t help it, either. “What did you do, anyway? To make him hate you so bad?”

“Mostly just by breathing. But wait, Octavia, why are you here? Why are you trying to get to Lexa?”

Octavia’s brow twitches at Lexa’s name. It only occurs then how difficult it had been to even _get_ Lexa’s name and so it shouldn’t really surprise her, that Octavia obviously knows her as nothing other than the Commander. “Well I was told the… Commander, she can—she can get us out. She almost did it once before.”

“You mean…”

“Yes,” Octavia says, pushing her shoulders back. “We’re planning a jailbreak.”

For the first time in so long Clarke feels a real, _genuine_ flicker of hope in her gut.

“I’ll get her to sleep,” Clarke promises. “Tomorrow. Do this again, she’ll be sleeping.” A thought occurs to her, though, and she frowns. “Wait, is it only _you_ that can… get in our dreams? Or could you take me too?”

“Like… take you _with_ me into her dream?”

“Yeah, just, sort of,” and she does some useless gesture with her hands, trying to mime spinning yarn, “you know, join us all together.”

Octavia seems to think it over before offering a cautious shrug. “I can try, sure.”

Her hands feel like they’re shaking, but Clarke can’t say anything more before Octavia’s head jerks up, eyes narrowing and scanning the ceiling for something even Clarke can’t see. “Damn,” she whispers, glances back down with a sigh. “You’re going to wake up soon. Okay, just—remember what you promised. Make sure she’s sleeping tomorrow, got it?”

Clarke nods hurriedly. “You don’t—”

And then she’s awake.

-

Clarke’s eyes snap open.

She shoots up from her bed, which is obviously something that she _never_ does so Lexa is immediately looking to her with concern and a little bit of fear. Clarke is just grinning breathlessly, though, staring right back at Lexa’s wide eyes with her own.

“Are you… okay?” Lexa asks through a heavy frown, picking her words her carefully.

“ _Better_ than okay.”

“…Right.” Lexa’s concern seems to double. There’s a long pause. “Has the lack of sun finally broken you?”

“What? No, Lex—” Clarke kicks at the bars between them, her excitement sputtering into exasperation. “No, _listen_ to me, alright?”

Lexa still looks unconvinced about her current mental state, but at least she gestures out tiredly with her hand. “Okay. I am listening.”

It’s at this point that Clarke realises that she can’t say anything.

They can’t let word get out. Rooms, cells, they can be monitored—they no doubt _are_ monitored—but dreams? That’s the one thing they can’t listen in on. She can’t risk it to say a thing out loud, not in case the plan that’s barely even a plan gets ruined before even being made. So. Now she just has to convince Lexa to sleep tonight in a totally not-obvious, not-suspicious way, which is great, because Lexa is probably the most suspecting person on the planet.

Fantastic.

Lexa raises a doubtful brow, staring expectantly at her. “Still listening…”

“Random question: if vampires don’t _need_ sleep, can they still actually sleep? Like, if you wanted to?”

Lexa narrows her eyes. “I suppose.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s like sleeping? What else would it be?”

Clarke sighs and bangs the back of her head against the cage bars. “I just find it _interesting_. When’s the last time you even took a nap?”

“When I want the sun to be gone,” Lexa says, serious as always.

“That’s… practical of you.”

Lexa continues staring at her like she’s lost her mind.

“Can you show me?”

“Show you _what_?”

“Vampire sleep,” Clarke says, nodding at her. “You don’t need to breathe, right? So how do you even fall asleep? You’ll probably just… look dead.”

Lexa frowns. “I _am_ dead, Clarke.”

“Not really,” Clarke says with a soft smile.

Somehow, this seems to make Lexa relax. “Are you really asking me to sleep just so you can see how it’s different to yours?”

“Absolutely. Tonight, though. Not now. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Lexa repeats, like she’s finally given up on trying to understand her.

Clarke just beams.

Emerson doesn’t come stomping in the rest of day, nor do any of the guards, and there’s no _sound_ of that sort of thing happening, either, from the rest of the complex. Lexa would no doubt hear it—and she’d tell Clarke what’s happening, too. Clarke tentatively takes it to mean that none of the guards have caught on.

Lexa is still eyeing her with intense suspicion like she has been all day, but that night, she still ends up cautiously lying herself down on the floor, flat on her back, hands neatly tangled atop her stomach. Clarke is about to lie down in her bed too; except at seeing Lexa’s borderline _clinical_ way she apparently sleeps, she can’t help but stare in disbelief.

“Seriously? _That’s_ how you sleep?”

Lexa scowls at her. “What’s wrong with it?”

Clarke does her best to bite down her mocking grin. It doesn’t seem to work because Lexa’s expression darkens even further. “Nothing’s… wrong with it. It’s just, you sleep exactly like how someone who has never slept before but is trying to pretend like they have sleeps.”

“That is incredibly specific.”

“Specifically _correct_.”

Lexa glares and pointedly looks up to the ceiling. “Whatever,” she mutters, crossing her arms over her chest but still closing her eyes anyway, determined to see this through now that Clarke made the mistake of calling out on it. Clarke suspects there’s not that much Lexa wouldn’t do to win an argument. Not like _she_ herself can talk, but still. So damn melodramatic.

Clarke smiles victoriously to herself, settles down into her bed.

When she opens her eyes again she doesn’t know where she is.

It _is_ outside, though. An outside that Clarke hasn’t felt in weeks. And even if she knows this is a dream and nothing less, this isn’t real, this isn’t the sort of memory that counts, it doesn’t stop the uncontrollable smile that spreads out on her face, greedily looking up to the endless night sky and the full moon shining there without a drip of shame.

Her eyes get caught on that, particularly. It feels weird to see the full moon and then just feel… nothing. The wolf stays sleeping in her blood. It almost feels sacrilegious, like this will finally be the thing that damns her, once and for all.

“Of course.”

Clarke jerks around at the voice. Lexa looks as ethereal as she always does, even with her hands deep in her dark jean pockets and head tipped back to take in the moonlight. She’s standing in the middle of the field they seem to be in—a wider scan of their surroundings show it’s a village, an _old_ one, too. Thatched roofs, wooden frames filled with mud and clay and grass, not the stone or bricks she’s so used to.

What captures her attention the most, though, is Lexa. How she’s smiling, but only in that way that if she doesn’t then she just might never again.

Lexa turns around when Clarke approaches.

The smile drops and Lexa sighs tiredly. “This is why I don’t sleep.”

Clarke’s brow twitches. “What?”

“Will you ever give me peace?”

“Unlikely.”

Lexa doesn’t react how she usually does. Instead of rolling or eyes or sighing, her smile actually _returns_ , and she comes forward, reaches out to brush that runaway hair out of Clarke’s eyes and tuck it gently behind her ear. Clarke’s whole body locks up, eyes-wide but otherwise frozen, unable to do a thing but stare wildly at her.

“You can tell, you know,” Lexa says quietly, a quirk only at the edge of her mouth and her hand still resting on Clarke’s neck, her thumb brushing the line of her jaw. Clarke can’t even speak. “You were born from the moonlight.” Lexa’s eyes get softer, warmer. “That’s how you know a werewolf. It’s always in their eyes, see? You’re always looking up, always trying to find the sky. Like that’s where your soul is. That’s where you’re meant to be.”

“You’re where I’m meant to be,” Clarke whispers.

Lexa laughs through her nose. “I will dream,” she whispers back, though it still comes out like a joke. Like she already knows she’s lost.

Something shifts in the air between them and Clarke’s eyes fall lower. Lexa’s fingers are still drawing mindless patterns over the sensitive skin at her neck and she can’t stop the way she shivers involuntarily because of it. It makes her feel alive in a way she hasn’t felt in weeks, probably not since that morning she’d been brought back to find Lexa’s body curled around hers, their faces so close.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Clarke says, but her words come out weak and shaking. Lexa moves imperceptibly closer and all Clarke can do is stare even harder at the lips that are now right in front of her own.

Lexa seems to be doing the exact same thing. “Me too.”

Clarke wants to shake her head, tell her about Octavia and this dream, except then Lexa is leaning in and Clarke has _wanted_ this for so long that without realising she does too, her eyes falling shut.

“COMMANDER!”

Both of them leap apart at the overexcited shout like they’ve been burned.

“Jesus!” Clarke hisses back, pretty sure the only reason she _didn’t_ have a heart attack just then is solely because this is a dream. Lexa looks the same level of panic despite having no heart left to go dying on her. “What the fuck, Octavia?”

Octavia’s beaming grin fades at her reaction. “What? Sorry it took me a minute to get here, I wanted to get _you_ in first so then I can piggyback after. Figured that since you said vampires don’t sleep—but _werewolves_ certainly do—that it’d be safer if I anchored myself on you first, in case things went wrong.”

“Right,” Clarke says, blushing deeply and intensely grateful that the night around them hides it somewhat. Only barely, though. And she can _feel_ Lexa’s eyes boring into the side of her head over what just happened. “Uh, that’s—that’s probably a good idea.”

Octavia looks at her like she’s an idiot. “Yeah. Exactly.”

They all stand there awkwardly looking at each other.

It’s Lexa who is the one to break the tension first. “While… Clarke here seems to know who you are, Octavia, I do not have the same privilege.”

“Oh, Clarke didn’t tell you?”

“Figured it might be risky,” Clarke mutters.

Octavia actually seems relieved at that. “Good. Well, uh, Commander, let me first just say it’s an honour to meet you and I’m… really, really sorry for intruding on your dream, but this was important. Please remember that if we end up fighting.”

The whole dream Lexa has been this unseen side of relaxed, merely taking everything as it is and with barely any of the walls that usually she’s so careful of guarding over. But the moment Octavia is finished talking, Clarke watches the frown that settles over Lexa’s face and that familiar tension that sneaks back into Lexa’s shoulders, straightens her back.

“Who are you?”

“She’s a sandman,” Clarke explains, figuring herself a safer target to direct Lexa’s incoming fury over.

Lexa stares at her. “A sandman?”

Clarke swallows at the dangerous look in Lexa’s eyes. “The creature that can control your dreams.”

“So this is…?”

“This is real. It’s why I wanted you to sleep. Octavia jumped in mine last night, she’s been trying to reach you for a while apparently, but, you don’t sleep, so…”

“This is real,” Lexa says slowly, the slow horror of realisation dawning on her face.

“…Yes.”

“Oh.”

Lexa takes a sizable step away from her and seems to be considering if there might be a convenient stake she could fall onto lying around.

It stings far more than Clarke expected, but at seeing the desperate, hopeful way that Octavia is looking between them, finally finding something to _hold on_ to; she knows she can’t ruin this. So she merely swallows down all she doesn’t have the right to feel and looks back to Octavia.

“You talked with me about escape before. That you had a plan…?”

Octavia grimaces. “Okay, so, saying that we have an _actual_ concrete plan might be pushing it. The plan so far has been to, uh, reach the Commander. So.”

“So you have no idea where to go from here,” Clarke finishes, unable to keep disappointment out of her voice.

Octavia bristles under the tone, but Lexa seems to finally snap back out of it. Considering all that Lexa’s told her, it’s no surprise that at first sign conflict Lexa’s already looking their way, stepping herself between. She doesn’t look at _her_ but keeps her gaze steady on Octavia. Clarke just watches the back of Lexa’s head and wonders if there will ever be a time that Lexa won’t throw herself on the sword just to cushion the fall of everyone else behind her.

“You said we,” Lexa says carefully, brows creased. “Who else is with you? Are you with the other cages?”

Octavia’s eyes snap to Lexa’s. “Yes, we—we used to have more of us together, but they’ve started spreading the cages out in different rooms. There’s six with me, including myself. I knew someone who got moved, though, and I’ve been trying to check in on them through their dreams. They’re capped at six too.”

“Well, at least they’re keeping it even,” Clarke mutters.

Lexa nods distractedly. “Easier to organise and keep track of numbers.”

Silence sinks in between them all as they reel from the information. Octavia keeps glancing to them both, nervous hope written over every inch of her face. It’s something that Clarke almost doesn’t recognise after being down here so long. “Will you help?”

Lexa hesitates, though. “What happened last time…”

“Won’t happen again,” Clarke finishes firmly.

Lexa finally looks at her, then. Her eyes are wide but they’re _scared_ in a way that Clarke has never seen. Without thinking Clarke is already gravitating forward and reaching out, gently squeezes her wrist. “We’ve got this,” she whispers, trying to offer her a hopeful grin. “We’ll do this right. They were expecting it before, and you had no way of knowing anything. This is different.”

“How can you be so sure of that?” Lexa whispers back. She doesn’t pull away from Clarke’s touch.

Clarke shrugs, tries to come off far more causal than she actually is. “It’s you and me. We’ll be alright. All we’ve gotta fight for is a morning, right?”

“The morning is far,” Lexa counters.

“And inevitable.”

The way Lexa is looking at her has her heart doing something stupid behind her chest and Clarke steps back. They’re too close, close enough again that Clarke remembers so vividly just what they’d gotten interrupted from before, what they almost did. Lexa seems to come to same conclusion because she blinks all she’ll never say out her eyes and steps back too, shutters her face into something harder, fiercer.

“First, we work out our numbers,” Lexa says, finally the Commander again at last.

Octavia’s whole body seems to slump with relief and she _beams_ , wider than anything Clarke’s seen from her. She nods frantically, Lexa moving closer to her and almost seeming to put Octavia between them, talking fast and sure, listing all they should be looking into first, hands clasped behind her back, voice emotionless.

Clarke’s eyes inexplicably drift up, to the full moon still shining above them.

When she glances down again, Lexa’s head is already turning away, fast enough that Clarke almost doesn’t notice.

Almost.

-

The next morning is awkward to say the least.

When Clarke wakes up, the only thing she does is stare at the bars above her. She _knows_ Lexa is doing exact same thing, too, even if she doesn’t have to look at her to see. Lexa doesn’t move, there’s no rustle of clothes, and so Clarke isn’t that surprised to find the first half of the morning is just the both of them lying and looking at anything but each other.

She can’t stop replaying the moment in her head. With Lexa so close—and in _more_ than just a physical sense, but close in that way that she was letting it all out without resistance, no fight. Dreams can’t really lie. They’re the one corner where there’s nowhere you can run from yourself. And the fact that _Lexa_ thinks Clarke counts as that truth that can’t ever be believed shifts the whole world off its axis.

Clarke always thought she was alone. That the way her heart was crawling out to just a few metres over was a one-way thing. It was always doomed, sure. That was without question.

Except, now Clarke realises it’s doomed in the total opposite way to what she thought it was.

It’s not that it won’t ever happen.

It’s that it _could_.

The door gets heaved open sometime later. Clarke rolls her head and watches the guards filter in. One crouches down and slides her meal through the hatch while the other throws the blood bag through Lexa’s cage bars. It hits the space next to her head, and for this, Lexa’s neck tilts up and she meets the guard’s eyes.

Apparently the guard isn’t a complete idiot, because his face pales and flees.

The other guard glares at the coward’s escape but pushes up to his feet, tiredly follows after.

They eat in silence.

Clarke pushes the plate away with her foot to the edge of cage once she’s done. She crawls back onto her bed and scoots backwards until her back is pressed against the bars and she can tip her head back and resume watching the ceiling. Lexa still doesn’t say anything, and the silence gets thicker, strains and burdens under the unsaid.

Her eyes drop and look down at her hands.

She wonders what would’ve happened if Octavia hadn’t interrupted. How far they would’ve gone before the guilt ate her up and she’d push Lexa away, tell the truth. Wonders if maybe that wouldn’t even _change_ anything, if Lexa knew. And it was just them. Alone together. No one else.

Distantly, she watches as her fingers curl until they’re in tight fists, the sting of her nails feeling like the thing that finally, finally wakes her up.

There’s no point entertaining the hypotheticals. This is about _survival_. This is about escape. It’s about revenge.

And since Lexa is _clearly_ not going to be the one to walk that plank first…

“I had a cat once,” Clarke reveals with no warning whatsoever.

There’s a long pause. Then, completely deadpan: “I do not believe you for a second.”

Clarke grins wide. The tension is still hovering between them, but _this_ time when she tilts her head and looks over she meets Lexa’s eyes and she just looks so damn _relieved_ that they’re even talking. There’s this brief moment where they just stay there watching each other, in that fearful, anticipatory way of waiting for it all to go wrong, to watch those foundations they’d worked so hard on to come crumbing down—but then the moment stretches, and it ends.

What’s one more thing to forget, anyway?

“I’m serious,” Clarke goes on, though grin only manages half the strength now at realising that neither of them really is going to stay it, that it’ll be forgotten like so much else down here. She blinks away the heat in her eyes and clears her throat. “She _hated_ me when I was shifted, right? Would fuck off right through the door the absolute second the smell of change was in the air. But, when I was human, like this,” she gestures down at herself, “she put up with me easy enough.”

Lexa shakes her head in disbelief. “ _How_?”

Clarke shrugs. “I’d bring back some of the game I hunted sometimes, just kept some remains for her. _Prime_ cuts, too, I could be a professional if I wanted.”

“Delusional,” Lexa mutters.

Clarke rolls her eyes and kicks the bars playfully. “ _Any_ -the-hell-way… A girl knows a good deal when she’s got one. You know,” and her grin returns, but it’s more genuine than before, “she even brought back some of _her_ hunts too for me. Of course it was mostly like, birds and shit, but I was very honoured. I only lost her when I got into a fight with another wolf and he came in already shifted, so I had to too.” She sighs wistfully. “By the time it was over I checked every inch of the trailer, but she’d run off. Never came back, either.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Lexa looks like she actually believes her now, and that alone is more crazy than any other bullshit story Clarke could make up. Finally, Clarke only shakes her head and scowls.

“Fuckin’ Finn. That cat was one in a million. You know, I _still_ hesitate when I see a tabby anywhere, just to make it’s not her.”

Lexa hums sympathetically. “Losing a soulmate can be difficult.”

“Keep talking shit, blood drive.”

Lexa’s smirk spreads further. “It is considered a grave offence to insult vampiric royalty.”

“Please,” Clarke scoffs. “The only royal you are is a royal pain in my ass.”

“As eloquent as always, Clarke,” Lexa says and for a second they’re just left grinning like fools at each other and really, even if they never touch again, if they never admit a damn thing between—that would pretty alright if she could even have just this.

All the tension she’d woken up with finally bleeds out of her and Clarke closes her eyes, breathes out slow and even. They fall back into silence, but it’s comfortable now, it’s how it always is.

Lexa speaks up a full minute later and the smile is audible in her voice. “You really still think about her, don’t you?”

“One in a goddamn million, Lexa.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked that and cheers for reading. also want to wish all you well with the whole pandemic currently going on. stay safe, wash your hands, and happy quarantineing! 
> 
> i wish you all a (virus-free) good one :)


	4. even beneath the wreck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what? me upping the chapter count again? nah, you’re just seeing things. only someone with disastrous planning skills would have to do that. which I am not. obviously. ANYWAY thank you so much for your patience and your comments. have an extra long chapter for it. i think i got most of the typos, but as always, if typos are something that drive you mad, kindly point them out and ill fix them for you. 
> 
> heads up also that tags have been updated! *wink wink*

_Because we all live in a wounded house_

_And living here will be the death of me._

_-_ [ _Wounded Wolf by Giles Corey (2013)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYlMGHTmZ4Q)

There’s this old werewolf tradition, one of the few they even have.

They do it once a year. Werewolves don’t hold on to a lot of things. It’s hard to, when the whole point of their _existence_ is being reborn over and over again, just blindly rebuilding back up the same person and hoping the face matches the one from before. But the one exception they keep for themselves, is Unity Day.

It’s not a lot. And her mother was more religious about following it than Clarke was, all those times when she’d been made to go to it as a kid, being stuffed into the car and sternly reminded that good girls who don’t have to be dragged kicking and screaming can get an extra hour of TV tonight. Even at six-years old Clarke considered herself pragmatic enough to know a decent deal when you’ve got one.

But it really was never so bad. It was more the _driving_ there and back that made Clarke hesitate, but the actual night itself—when they find that particular clearing hidden deep in whatever woods, marked by a specific symbol carved into trees— _that_ was always the best part. Because the whole family came then, and she got to see her uncles.

Especially Shawn. Her uncle Noah, he was more like Abby. He played it quiet, worked a steady job, could easily be passed off as a human on a first glance. But the eldest of the litter; he was always moving, always running. On the first night of every October, though, he called up, asked where they were and dutifully showed up every year for it.

This particular one, when she was six—it was just him. Noah was busy because one of his kids had gotten sick, and then the _other_ got sick, and then his wife got taken with it too and there was just no way he was coming. Clarke was sitting up on her dad’s shoulders, as they waited standing by the car while Abby took the news from him over the phone.

“You’re sure this is the place?” Jake had asked, after Abby had slipped the phone away and was now scanning the woods, nostrils flared. Apparently, neither of them were all too worried about the development with Noah. The wolf always leaves you running with a fever, her mother assured. Noah would never get sick unless it was _seriously_ bad, or supernatural. The blood in werewolves is too hot. Bacteria die before even getting a foot in the door. He’ll be able to take care of them fine.

“This is it,” Abby said after a lengthy pause. Clarke looked around too, but she only saw what Jake did. Nothing but trees and the dark. It was late enough the moon was out. The moon is always out in werewolf stories.

Jake trusted her implicitly, though, so he’d just nodded and easily followed after her, whatever way Abby walked.

They ended up walking for long enough that Clarke started nodding off, the rhythmic sway up and down from Jake’s steady pace lulling the exhaustion in her. It was definitely past her bedtime and she was seconds from just falling asleep atop Jake’s shoulders right there.

But then Abby’s hand shot up.

Jake stumbled to a stop, not expecting the suddenness of it. It jostled Clarke enough that she managed to rear her neck up from where she’d been pillowing her arms over Jake’s head. And she could _feel_ the way he tensed, how the grip on her ankles tightened.

Abby was already grinning, though.

From the dark, a shadow melted out from between the trees. It wasn’t seen till it _wanted_ to be seen, but even Clarke recognised instantly the brown fur and that certain pattern that trailed around its muzzle, hugged up its pelt. Already, Clarke was wriggling to get off Jake’s back until finally he laughed and knelt down for her, let her slide off so she could eagerly run around and reach her uncle.

She was only barely taller than him. And even with all those monstrous teeth and eyes that burned like the devil staring up from below, Clarke threw her arms around him with no resistance and got a disgusting amount of slobber over her face in return, to the point that she got pushed back into the ground, laughing and trying to shove the enthusiastic muzzle off her face.

Eventually her uncle finally relented, backed off and by the time Clarke had pushed up to her feet and wiped the slobber from her face with her shirt he was already halfway through shifting back to two legs. He rolled his shoulders once he was done, something popping unnaturally loud in his neck.

Abby had a bag ready with her. She barely waited a second for him to get his bearings again before throwing the bag into his naked chest, sending him staggering back with an _oof_.

“Missed you too,” Shawn wheezed.

He had the same hair as Abby, the same sharp jaw. But crawling up his ribs was the sort of tattoo that Clarke was forbidden to get. It wasn’t so much forbidden for what it _was_ —which was tribal vines, the silhouette of a wolf howling if you squinted enough, if you _believed_ enough—but more what the tattoo covered. Which was a nasty, nasty scar.

Every time Clarke asked about it, he’d tell her a different story about how it got there.

His best one involved wrestling a shark and escaping government agents.

“Noah?” Shawn checked, after he’d stepped in through the pair of jeans and threaded the belt through the loops. He didn’t bother with the shirt. Chances were he would only lose it once the night was over and he ran back to wherever home was.

“The kids came down with something,” Jake explained and Shawn glanced to him, made a show of nodding.

“Well,” Shawn said, and then he grinned and looked back down to Clarke, ruffling her hair until she swatted his hand away with a giggle. “Guess I’m stuck with my favourite niece, aren’t I?”

Abby shook her head with an exasperated smile. “Don’t let Noah hear you say that.”

“You gonna snitch on me?” Shawn said, grinning with his teeth.

Abby merely shoved his shoulder and pushed him forward.

The rest of the trek wasn’t so long. Halfway through it, though, Clarke had been at the edge of the group holding her father’s hand when both Abby and Shawn stiffened, looked in the same direction, then back to each other, and without speaking Shawn was then silently slipping around the back of them until he was on Clarke’s other side, nearby and just slightly trailing behind.

It was because they were getting close.

And other werewolves were showing through the woods, shadows shifting like ripples in water. Unity Day was the one day a year that all the wolves came out. It was the day for acknowledging the ones gone and the ones left standing. To look at every face, have them look right back at you.

That didn’t mean you had to explicitly _trust_ everyone, though.

“Why are we all here?” Clarke asked, because this was around the time she started questioning _everything_.

Her uncle was the one to answer first. He moved up closer to her, waiting until he had her eyes. “Well, we’ve been doing it about forever, see? Right since the dawn of time, since the first werewolf ever brushed her teeth.”

Abby snorted. Jake wisely stayed quiet next to her and didn’t get in between the siblings. “Oh yeah? And what sort of toothpaste did they have back then?”

Shawn ignored her. Instead, he leant down closer to Clarke, lowering his voice so she knew this was just for her. “Don’t listen to her. You ever met a werewolf with bad breath?”

Clarke thought about it before shaking her head.

“ _Exactly_ ,” he said, eyes too-wide and nodding seriously. “No werewolf wants dog breath. We’d be discovered in a heartbeat, wouldn’t we?”

“But why do we do _this_ ,” Clarke repeated, because he wasn’t answering her question.

He grinned fondly, like it was the exact response he wanted. “Because, it’s the one thing you’ve always got to remember, cub. We don’t do good with being alone.”

This time, Abby didn’t interrupt. Something shifted in her face, but Shawn didn’t look away from Clarke. And he just smiled. Rare and soft. “It’s in my blood,” he touched where his heart was, “and it’s in yours.” He gently tapped hers. “You will always want to reach up for someone. And that’s why we come here, so we can reach out and have someone reach back. It’s how we say sorry.”

Clarke’s little brow furrowed in. “Sorry for what?”

Shawn didn’t say, just let out this quiet, sad laugh and stood back up to his height.

It’s a moment that Clarke has thought about for years. But she thinks she gets it now, especially from where she now sits in some old and ancient war room as Lexa’s dreams seemed to be the one they were all hiding in tonight. She gets it as she sits there and listens and watches Lexa and Octavia talking with each other, staring down at a map Lexa drew of all she remembers of the mountain’s layout, nodding when Octavia mentions any new information, looks up to Clarke so she can reach across and draw it in.

Unity Day was never about seeing who was left standing. It was to offer a last chance, a last memory. To see all the faces stood around you and doing your best to _remember_ them, because chances were they wouldn’t be coming back next year. Because something went wrong. Because they forgot to lock their door, or they didn’t look over their shoulder enough, or it just so happened they took a step out of the woods right as that hunter turned around, had just finished his smoke break.

Clarke stares at her for too long until finally Lexa glances up, gives her this curious look.

There’s something opening up in her chest that feels like it’ll swallow her whole, but the only thing Clarke does is shake her head, trying to say it’s nothing. Lexa still watches her an extra beat until Octavia grows antsy from beside her, glancing between them. Eventually Lexa accepts and focuses her attention back to the map.

Clarke keeps sneaking glances at her, though, and all she can think of is _I’m sorry_.

Because no matter how this ends they are going to lose themselves.

Really, she already has.

-

They end up in a routine.

The next week, every night they’re either in Lexa’s dreams or Clarke’s, all huddled around and talking long and hard until even the night tires of it and they’re spat back out into the day. The stress is building up, and not just because the constant planning each night is leaving little time for actual _sleeping_ and the exhaustion is weighing on her. She can see that same exhaustion in Octavia, too. Sandmen aren’t meant to abuse their abilities every night like this.

But the _real_ stress is because of something else they learnt because of that. During the third night where they are all crowded in Clarke’s childhood house and arguing about how they were going to _get_ everyone out, something occurs to Clarke that makes her stop midway, and look over to Octavia.

“Why are you here?”

Even Lexa goes quiet at the question, blinking up at her at the sudden one-eighty in conversation. “Why am _I_ here?” Octavia asks, equally confused.

Clarke just nods. “Cage wants a show more than anything, right? And your abilities, they start and finish at dreams?”

Understanding dawns and Octavia straightens up. “I can still kill people,” Octavia says, with that sort of pained certainty in her voice that tells them all they need to know. “But just… not like this.”

“Like this?” Lexa echoes.

Octavia waves a hand to the dining room around them. “This isn’t my dream. It’s _yours_. I’m just hijacking it. Because—that’s the thing, and it’s probably why none of the guards suspect anything and _none_ of them get themselves in range to touch me. I need a _physical_ tether, if I want to do more than just show up in someone else’s dream. That’s the only way they’ll have seen me do it. Plus, well, they’re arrogant and dumb as shit. Like they’re going to check if I can do more than what they already know.”

“You can kill people if you touch them?” Clarke asks with horror, feeling suddenly a whole lot less safe.

Octavia shrugs like it’s nothing. “Sort of. I can make people fall asleep. And then, when I’ve got control of the dream, I can kill them in their dreams, but they still die in real life. It’s…” she stops, grimacing a little at the blase way she talks about it, but still doesn’t know how else to _say_ it, anyway. Finally, she merely sighs and glances up tiredly to both of them.

“It’s my fault I got dragged here. I got… tangled with a bad crowd. Others like me. It was good for money, alright? We’d take up contracts and mess with the target’s dreams. Mostly, it was just politicians trying to sway other politicians and shit like that. Sometimes even just an ex-wife wanting revenge. We didn’t kill,” she clarifies quickly, at seeing the way their expressions changed. “It was _never_ for killing. It was just a way to get easy cash for my kind. And I _swear_ I was about to just do one more, right? I was just going to do one last job and then I was out, was never gonna step back with them again.”

Lexa nods slowly, already knowing where this was going. “And the last contract was issued by Cage.”

Octavia doesn’t need to answer; the confirmation is all in the way she scowls in frustration and anger. At herself. For willingly walking right in through the door. Clarke’s mind is still running, though, because while that all explains the _how_ it doesn’t explain the why. And one thing stalls her in particular, one little detail Octavia mentioned and they’d been dealing with.

Separating the cages.

Killing someone in their dreams doesn’t make a show for anyone but themselves. No one would pay for money for that, not unless Octavia could rope the entire audience in it too. Which she can’t. Even Clarke can see the strain of having _two_ people to keep together. _Maybe_ she could stretch to balance a couple more, but there was no way she could handle an entire damn room.

So what is the profit? Because that’s all Cage cares for.

Clarke locks her fingers behind her head, staring down at the map on the table. The estimate is that there’s about fifty of them, give or take, spread throughout the compound. Some locked in bigger and better cages and others merely stuffed into whatever is left. Her eyes drift down to where they’ve written in Octavia’s name, in that one room that they’re pretty sure is at opposite end of where she and Lexa are.

“Who is with you?” Clarke asks, still not looking at Octavia but the map, frowning deeply. When there’s no response, she glances up to see Octavia just staring at her in confusion. “I mean, _what_ is with you? What other kinds are with you?”

“Well… there’s this nature guy, who can like mess with plants or something. Pretty sure the woman next to me is a banshee ‘cause she screams every other night—which, _ow_ , can I say—and I am _definitely_ sure the other woman across from me is a werecat because I’ve been snarled at like, ten times.”

Clarke can’t help but smile fondly. “They do that.”

“Anyone else?” Lexa questions, as unsurprisingly it seems like she’s caught on to Clarke’s line of thinking.

Octavia thinks it over. “No, that’s it. We used to have more, but… like I said. We got separated. The one who got moved but I kept talking to, Lincoln, he’s a vampire. He’s the one who told me to find you.” Octavia sighs, though. “I’m just glad they moved that fucking dog. It was this horrifying thing with red eyes, right? And like, always had this black smoke seeping out of it. I swear, him and the werecat would just _not_ step yelling at each other. It was a relief when they took him away. Thing was terrifying _and_ annoying.”

Clarke slowly looks up and meets Lexa’s eyes, can already see the same conclusion there on her face. “They moved all the fighters,” Clarke says.

Lexa nods, grimacing. “I think he’s expanding his business.”

“Expanding?” Octavia says, glancing rapidly between them.

There’s no real easy way to say it. But, well. _Nothing_ about this hellhole is easy to say. “Emerson is always talking about selling my pelt,” Clarke says cautiously, looking only at Octavia. She watches the realisation hit. “I think they’ve just started skipping a few steps and gone right to selling.”

“You’re saying I’m going to be _sold off_?”

“Most likely,” Lexa admits. Clarke shoots her grateful look for taking over. How exactly do you explain to someone you’re probably going to be sold off as a pet? “Your abilities clearly make you useful to those in power. People want weapons.”

Octavia stares down at the table like in a daze.

Clarke clears her throat. “Hey, uh, bright side, you probably don’t have to kill anyone?”

“ _Clarke_ ,” Lexa hisses to her.

“ _What_?” Clarke hisses in a whisper back. “What the hell am I expected to say? I don’t hear _you_ trying.”

Lexa just hits Clarke’s leg under the table.

And when Clarke merely swats Lexa’s leg right back, it almost feels like they’re _normal_. Like they are anywhere but where they actually are. And that’s probably the worst part, truly, of doing these dreams together every night. In the moment it matters and is irreversible, but then like always it _ends_ and suddenly she’s staring at the same spot on the ceiling, the metal bars running across and wondering why the air tastes twice as stale as it usually does.

But the invisible clock still ticks.

-

The first issue they work to solve is the locks.

To do it, Octavia actually brings in someone else. Though, she’s quick to explain that it’s not _really_ her own choice, and more that this person kept creating increasingly elaborate sets of threats against Octavia if she _didn’t_ involve her. Clarke worries about the strain of juggling four people in a dream at once and even more about just how much more fragile this gets the more people know about it, the more weight that’s added to the glass floor that sits between them and discovery.

Clarke is staring down at the map, turned away from where Octavia has said she’ll be right back and’s gone off to go drag the newcomer in with them. Lexa stands next to her and leans close to her ear. It’s also especiallyannoying when Clarke doesn’t even realise she’s instinctually leant in closer to her until it’s too late, till she feels the solid weight of Lexa’s body pressed into the side of her own.

“Octavia is being reckless doing this,” Lexa whispers to her. Clarke’s more distracted with the feel of the words brushing against her ear, but at least manages _some_ semblance of competence. Which is pretty impressive, considering.

She just sighs. “Octavia is the only reason we’re even able to do this. Who do you think will suffer if they find out what we’re doing?”

Lexa says nothing for that.

“Exactly,” Clarke says, but it comes out more like an exhausted exhale. She really is starting to miss _normal_ sleep. “We’ll need more people, anyway. Bringing them in now just saves us the time later.”

“And if this new person reveals us in hopes of their own preservation?”

“This _new person_ is standing right behind you and has ears.”

They both spin around. Clarke immediately freezes, but Lexa merely glares at Octavia, who’s standing next to the woman she’d brought in. “You _seriously_ need to start giving warning, Octavia,” Lexa chides and Octavia must be just the tiniest bit still terrified of her because she nods rapidly.

“So,” Octavia says anyway, smiling sheepishly. “This is—”

“Raven,” Clarke finishes, staring at what her brain can hardly make sense of.

She looks different from the last time Clarke had seen her. Older, taller. Shoulders filled with more weight and memories and her eyes somehow even less trusting than before. But it still does nothing to stop the sheer _warmth_ that floods through her chest and has her laughing breathlessly through a wide smile, and then she’s lunging forward before she can stop herself, yanking Raven into a tight hug.

The fact that Raven hugs her back is a sign itself of all that’s changed.

“You still went and did something stupid,” Raven mumbles into shoulder, and Clarke closes her eyes and breathes in the familiar scent of her that sends her right back to that trailer, to being curled over in the bathroom and Raven next to her, holding her hair, trying to distract her with stories and shitty jokes while Clarke suffered through the silver in her blood.

“So did you,” Clarke says back. Raven’s kind enough to not mention how it comes out a little choked.

She pulls back still grinning and Raven is too, though far more subdued. Her eyes shift out to where Lexa and Octavia are just staring wide-eyed at them, and at the combined ogling Raven is quick to step away from her and shove her hands into her pockets, glaring at them both. 

“ _What_?” Raven snaps at them, her lip curled up in a familiar snarl.

So some things haven’t changed.

“I thought you hated everyone?” Octavia says honestly, clearly dumbfounded that Raven is capable of anything that wasn’t an insult. Lexa doesn’t speak, but her eyes narrow, jumping between them and particularly eyeing the gap. How easily they stood in each other’s space.

Raven shrugs. “I do. But she saved my life once, so. I hate her a _little_ less than everyone else.”

How sweet.

“She saved your life?” Lexa asks, but the knowledge seems to relax her somehow.

“Some years ago,” Clarke explains. The relieved smile slips off her face as the reality settles in, and guilt festers in her gut as she looks to Raven again, notices the hollow look in her eyes that everyone stood in this room has. “This is probably one of the few scenarios I’d have hoped to never see you again in, though.”

Raven just offers her a sad, knowing smile, like saying we’ve _got_ to stop meeting like this.

Octavia rubs her face, holding the back of her head before merely nodding away the insanity of these events and moving on. “Okay, so… back on to the whole _escaping_ thing, again…”

Any traces of lightness disappear and they all straighten up. Clarke can’t help but drift over back to Lexa, lean her weight into her side and feel the lukewarm touch of her skin press against her arm. Wordlessly, Lexa’s eyes stay stuck to the map on the table, occasionally shifting up to Raven as she explains, but _under_ the table and out of her sight Lexa sacrifices a hand so her fingers brush against Clarke’s own. She barely has to nudge a second before Clarke opens up her palm and easily slides their fingers together, entwining and squeezing hard.

They talk for a while. The main thing they keep running into is the locks, how they’re going to steal the keys off the guards. Clarke suggests to try for it when they come down to bring them out for the fights. Because the guards unlock the cage _for_ them, in that instance. After that it’s just a matter of surviving the guards and snatching the key off the body.

But Lexa says that’s what _she_ did before and _that’s_ why there are so many more guards now. Even if one of them managed to throw them all off and be the last one standing—chances are a guard will have already hissed into their radio during the fight, or ran right out the door at the first sign of danger. To warn the others. To not let history repeat itself.

“Have we thought about breaking the lock?” Raven asks, looking to them all.

Lexa nods. “There’s no way to physically break the lock. A witch enchanted the metal, so it wouldn’t matter if a _troll_ threw their weight against it. The metal won’t budge.”

“The witch theirs?”

“No, she was forced.”

“Forced,” Raven repeats, frowning. “So, it’s safe to say she _didn’t_ want to do it?”

Clarke tugs at where Lexa is still holding her hand. “They tortured her into doing it, right?”

“They offered money at first,” Lexa mutters. “But she still refused. I talked with her, briefly, when she came over to spell the metal. She said that she wanted no part in evil like this.”

Raven looks to them all. “So, what do you do when you’re forced to help someone you’d rather see dead?”

Clarke sucks in a sharp breath. “You find a loophole,” she exhales. “But—what weakness would she leave?”

“You fight magic with magic,” Lexa says, sharing the same wide-eyed look with Clarke. The one that felt like they were _getting_ somewhere.

They all stare wide-eyed to each other, jittery with the revelation until Octavia snaps her fingers, excitedly swatting Raven’s arm. “Hey, hey, what’s the guy that’s next to us? The one who uses nature-type magic, right? What’s his name?”

Raven scowls and pushes Octavia’s hands off her, but still carefully answers, “You mean Monty?”

“Yes! _Monty_ , that’s it. He has magic, right?”

“Something close to it, at least,” Raven cautions.

It’s still enough to settle it.

The next night Octavia ends up jumping into Monty’s dreams first, talking with him like they’d told her to. When Clarke wakes up in a field again, glancing around the now familiar grounds, she heads into the village and pushes open the same door of the house Lexa always herds them into only to pull to an abrupt stop.

A stranger is there, nervously waiting with Octavia. He keeps himself small, slim shoulders hunched in and his hands dug deep into his pockets, scanning the unfamiliar environment below a black fringe, dark brown eyes constantly zipping back and forth. They freeze on Clarke, and then shift up over her shoulder, the sight of what’s there making him swallow and even step back.

Clarke isn’t surprised to glance back and see Lexa close behind her.

“Show them,” Octavia says to Monty, almost shaking with excitement.

He hesitates, but slowly he pulls something tiny out from his pocket, gently places it on the table in front of him with a sort of reverence that reminds Clarke of how the full moon feels. She and Lexa silently come forward to watch and Monty doesn’t look at them when he raises his hand, hovering over the seed.

On his palm, little veins crawl up, miniscule and glowing a soft green, first spiralling out from his palm and then climbing up between his fingers like vines.

Below, the seed sprouts.

It climbs up in a twirl and eventually springs leaves, roots, opens all the way up until it’s a sapling. And when Monty lifts his hand higher, purposely twirls his finger—the stem arches toward it, replicates the movement. He lets it stretch there before clearing his throat and stuffing his hand back into his pockets, having shown what he wanted.

Clarke numbly comes forward and can’t stop _staring_ at the newly made plant in front of her.

The one that followed exactly where Monty wanted. The one _small_ enough it could fit to almost any space, that it just needed the slightest way in. The one created entirely by magic and nothing else. She has to force in a steadying breath to quell the dangerous hope breathing into their chest, looking over to Monty. “Do you know how to pick a lock?” Clarke asks, trying to measure her voice.

Monty winces, though he nods. “Not out of _nothing_ , though. I need a seed. And they’re _very_ careful to never let anything like that get near me.”

Her and Lexa, though.

The real problem will be getting it back to them.

But Clarke glances behind her and can see that Lexa’s already on the same train of thought. “I have an idea,” Lexa says, her eyes shining in a way they never have before. They all look expectantly at her, but Lexa keeps her eyes on Clarke. “It could involve pissing off Emerson, though, and he might retaliate somehow—”

“I’m in,” Clarke cuts off.

-

She waits hanging upside down.

It’s half to stave off boredom and half anxious preparation. There’s nothing really that drives you insane quite like preparing for a war, while also not letting the other side _know_ there’s a war coming, all the while they’re staring directly at you, watching your every breath. Y’know, just a real low-stress situation all around.

Still, Clarke knows she can get away with heaving herself up, keeping her knees hooked around the metal, breathing slow and controlled through her nose as she touches her calf with the tips of her fingers, and then falls back completely flat, giving herself a few seconds before doing it all over again. She’s been here long enough and made enough of a name that they’re not going to blink at her training.

They of course don’t need to know what _for_.

“I thought werewolves were built naturally with strength?”

Ever since she started this Lexa has been very deliberately looking away. She’s _terrible_ at it, though. Clarke knows she’s been watched this whole time, only it’s from the corner of Lexa’s eyes—because that is far as Lexa will cave—but she doesn’t say anything, lets them both keep the illusion. It’s something they’ve been doing a lot.

“The wolf is,” Clarke pants, straining as she sits up, holds it there till her core is trembling and she has to fall back in relief. “The _human_ in you, though.” She looks over to Lexa with a grin, letting her breathing even back out. “Rule number one: never depend on the wolf.”

“You barely did anything before,” Lexa says. She still doesn’t look directly at her.

Clarke laughs breathlessly. “Well, I was still under the illusion I was going to walk out of here, that it wouldn’t matter in the end. Or maybe even just wake up.”

The corner of Lexa’s mouth ticks up. “You think this a nightmare?”

It comes out almost wistful. Like it would’ve been nice. Like staying up the whole night just to see the sunrise. Just to watch the world end.

“Could’ve been,” Clarke says. She doesn’t move this time, either. Just hangs there. Watching the light swing from the floor.

“Even with me?”

“You’re what makes it so much worse.”

Lexa glances to her at that. Clarke feels her stare like a physical weight, but doesn’t give in, her eyes steadfastly aimed forward. This is the only way they can be honest. “That’s kind,” Lexa says, a joke but not. Because jokes aren’t whispered like that.

The blood is building up too high in her head and she has to push herself up. Everything goes sideways for a second, and Clarke grips the bars with her hands, waiting for the worst to pass. It’s something she’s gotten pretty good at, all things considered. 

“You ever been to the ocean?” Clarke asks, in a rather obvious attempt to change the subject.

Lexa doesn’t push it. Ever since that first dream where they almost kissed, it’s been like this. The constant push back and forth. The way it feels like they’re both eyeing the river between them, wondering if it’ll be worth it. If people like them even get chances like that, and it’s not just a history of bodies piled beneath the water from all those that tried to jump before, convinced they could be the exception.

It’s asking for a trust neither of them can give. Not _here_. Not now.

Maybe, though. Maybe.

“I am almost four hundred years old, Clarke.”

“Four hundred-year-old _introvert_ , maybe.”

Lexa glares at her and Clarke can meet her eyes, finally, grinning like a fool back. “Yes, I’ve been to the ocean,” Lexa points out slowly, and sounds appropriately annoyed at having to even do so. “Why do you ask?”

Clarke shrugs. She does another sit up, grunting a little at the effort. Her stomach is tight and aching and she’ll definitely have to stop soon before her body makes the decision for her. “I don’t know, I’ve always wanted to go,” Clarke pushes out, doing one last crunch. “Never been. Mom never took me, even Dad said no. I wanna _feel_ it at least, though. The sea. Just once.”

Lexa is silent for too long and so Clarke glances over to her, confused. But Lexa is just _staring_ at her, and after a long beat this disbelieved smile spreads over Lexa’s face, a rare amusement in her eyes that only happens when Lexa _actually_ finds Clarke’s jokes funny. Which is not often.

Clarke scowls at her, upside down and hair tumbling for the floor. “What?”

“You know _why_ , though, don’t you?”

“Why what?”

“Why she never took you.”

Clarke’s scowl shifts, a frown in its place.

Lexa’s eyes go wide at realising Clarke is being genuine. “Clarke,” she starts, and she laughs a little in the back of her throat, just giving her the most delightedly bewildered expression. “Your kind _hates_ the water. That’s why your mother never took you, and why I suspect she made sure your father didn’t take you anywhere near it, either.”

Clarke swings herself up and snatches the bars, untangles her legs so she can fall back down and finally be the right side up again, all so she can look Lexa directly in the eye and say, “Lexa, what the _hell_ are you on about?”

“Did she seriously never tell you?”

Clarke’s frown deepens. She tries to think back to those few times she’d asked as a kid, remembers how her mother had given her a pitying look and shook her head. “She said there was no point,” Clarke mutters, which, yeah, at the time had felt bizarre but _now_ with the way Lexa is very clearly trying not to laugh at her is starting to make a lot more sense. “What the _fuck_? How do you even know this?”

“There’s this old folktale,” Lexa answers, but she’s devolved into full on _grinning_ now and Clarke both wants to both smack and kiss it off. Whatever’s more effective, really. “Your kind and mine have had a long tendency of running into each other. Especially with wars, where there’s blood. There’s never been any outright wars between _us_ , but there’s always been—” Lexa pauses, trying to find the words. “Caution, I suppose. Where we creep in from one side and you creep in from the other. It builds a tension we can’t stop.”

“I fail to see what this has to do with anything.”

Lexa sighs for her impatience. “We have always done our best to avoid each other, is what I’m saying. And one lesson that Anya first taught me once I discovered your kind, it’s that if you ever piss off a werewolf: go across the river. Because they will not follow. Even boats are too much for them.”

Clarke stares at her. This… is a horrible revelation. “You’re lying.”

It only seems to amuse Lexa more. “And what possible motivation could I have for that?”

“To annoy _me_ , obviously.”

Lexa just shakes her head to herself. Clarke’s scowl returns, but she slumps down onto her bed, glaring at the floor. “This is bullshit.” The floor merely takes her insult unflinchingly and Clarke doesn’t care. “I’m still going to do it. I’m taking a swim and nothing’s stopping me.”

“You will have a panic attack the second the water gets to your ankles.”

“I will fucking not. Trust me, you’ll see. I’ll _make_ you see.”

Lexa hums like a jackass. No, like how _Clarke_ hums. Which is exactly why she sounds like a jackass. “Oh? I’m there with you in this scenario?”

Clarke looks over to her with a frown. “Of course you are.”

Lexa’s easy smile freezes, slips off.

She holds her eyes just long enough to regret it. Clarke looks away first, so Lexa doesn’t have to. The floor luckily hasn’t run off and so Clarke goes back to holding it down with her stare and wondering to herself if this’ll ever get easier. But then maybe that’s just a stupid question to ask when you’re locked up in a cage. Easier doesn’t matter. _Surviving_ does.

They’re saved by the door beeping. Clarke’s head shoots up, her heart kickstarting in her chest because this is the start, the first step towards freedom. The door pushes open. Clarke allows herself to waste a second and glance over to Lexa. She’s not even really sure _why_ she does or what she’s searching for, but Lexa offers her a nod all the same. Worst of all, the reassurance works.

Two guard dogs come in like always with their food. The one who slides Clarke’s tray is especially hesitant, though, nudging the tray under the cage with his foot, not his hands. Word probably spread about her biting a guard.

She wonders if Emerson went through with it. If it he really was _him_ that quietly took his guard outside, the gun trembling in his hands. That then gently pushed him down onto his knees, sandwiching the pillow between the barrel and the man’s head because it feels less _real_ then, feels less like you’re a monster. Clarke will never forget how Atom felt limp in her mouth and she doubts Emerson will ever forget the sound of that muffled gunshot.

“Hey,” Clarke calls out to the guard.

He freezes from where he’d been turning around, eager to get out the room. Slowly, the guard turns back around, meets her eyes. He stays out of reach from the cage.

“I want to talk with Emerson,” Clarke says. “He asked me to talk when I was ready. I’m ready.”

The guard looks over to his comrade. His friend shrugs, doesn’t know what to say either. The guard glares at him for being useless, though he glances back to Clarke and straightens up. “You don’t tell us what to do, dog.”

Clarke stands up. The guard steps back. “Call me dog again,” she says calmly, “and you can die like Emerson will. Which, let me tell you, is _not_ the sort of death you want to have. My kind is good at killing, but the _human_ in me…” Clarke smiles and leans forward, lowering her voice. “Well, we know a lot more about cruelty, don’t we?”

She stares hard into his eyes and knows he can see the promise there.

“So?” Clarke says finally, arching a brow.

The guards glance to each other once more before trudging out. Clarke leans back, breathing out slow and careful through her nose, but knowing there’s nothing she can do but wait now, see if he turns up. Lexa stays silent next to her, though when Clarke’s eyes shift out to her they turn flat at finding Lexa is, once again, back to meditating.

“So petty,” Clarke grumbles to herself.

“I heard that.”

Clarke smiles, though she keeps her eyes firmly on the door. Without saying anything she steps up, so she’s right at the front of her cage, hooks her arms through the bars and casually lets them hang them there, face pressed against the metal and blowing raspberries. If the lack of sun won’t break her, the constant _waiting_ will definitely be the final straw.

She’s almost about to give up when the door beeps again.

Emerson looks even more pissed than usual. Chances were he’d probably been right in the middle of his lunch when the guard tentatively came up to him and said he was wanted elsewhere. The thought brings her _great_ satisfaction and Clarke grins lazily, enjoying it even more when Emerson downright bares his teeth at seeing it.

Oh yeah, it must’ve been a damn good fucking lunch.

“I will you give three seconds to spit out whatever you want to fucking say, dog, and if you talk past three, I’m putting a tranq in you.”

Clarke tilts her head. “What? No death threats?”

Instead of answering, Emerson just pulls the tranq gun from his side and raises it up to the ceiling. Ready. Clarke merely stares at him unimpressed, but she gives in with a sigh so loud even Lexa would’ve been feeling pride for her.

“I’ve made my choice. I know what I want.”

Emerson just looks at her.

“The money,” Clarke spits, because of _course_ she has to spell it out for him. “You asked for a list.”

A slow smile spreads on his face. “I’m impressed,” Emerson murmurs, and to be fair he _does_ sound it. “You’re more a monster than I gave you credit for, dog.”

“I will take what I can get if it means you shitheads don’t get money off his corpse.”

“The corpse you made,” Emerson corrects.

“I was not the one to bring him here. That’s on _you_ , Emy. That is what I’ll remember.”

Emerson already looks bored with the back and forth and gestures sharply with the trang gun. “You’ve already more than wasted your three seconds. Get to the fucking point.”

“I want a TV.”

Emerson stares at her.

Clarke waves a hand out to the room through the bars. “You don’t need to put it _in_ my cage if you don’t trust me. Hang it up in a corner, or whatever. But I want a TV.”

“There’s no reception here,” Emerson says flatly.

“Get me a DVD player too, then. I’ll make you a list of movies.”

It’s immensely satisfying to watch the way Emerson’s entire face goes red. He doesn’t speak, just grinds his teeth so badly that Clarke pities his dentist. It’s obvious he’s about two seconds away from doing the exact same he did to his guard to Clarke. And with a _lot_ more blood, most likely.

“Aren’t you a man of your word, Emy?” Clarke pushes, anyway. She’s never been good at leaving well enough alone. “Considering the high horse you always piss from, I just assumed so. But,” and she shows her hands, lifts an innocent shoulder. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

He’s silent for almost an entire minute.

Clarke watches him for every second of it, never looking away.

“A TV,” Emerson mutters, disgusted. But his voice is also dragged down with defeat, and he scoffs, spinning around and storming for the door. Clarke watches him go, waits right until he’s made the exit.

“Oh, and one more thing.” Emerson stops. He doesn’t look back, his hand hovering over the door. Clarke smirks wide. “I want an apple.”

“An _apple_?” Emerson repeats, whipping around to stare in disbelief.

Clarke shrugs. “I’ve got a craving. Come on, can’t leave Cage’s best fighter starving, can you? I want an apple. _Fresh_ one, too.”

Emerson just stares like _are you fucking kidding me_. Finally, though, something changes in his eyes, because he smiles, faking a laugh. “You know what? _Fine_ , dog. But remember that all this shit you’re asking for? I’ll get it, but only because Cage doesn’t like _anything_ that cuts into his profits. You will get the best fucking TV out there, and I’ll find the shiniest goddamn apple, and guess what?”

“Cage will remember every cent of it,” Emerson whispers, victorious. “So I’d start preparing now if I were you. Because I think we both know who will pay the _real_ price for this.”

He slams the door closed behind him.

Clarke closes her eyes and exhales a trembling breath, the first sign of honest emotion since the guards had walked in. For a moment she just hangs her head there, waiting for her heartrate to even back out, before rearing her neck back up and glancing over to Lexa.

She’s not meditating anymore.

“It worked,” Lexa says, eyes wide and on her.

It’s about a hundred shades of paranoid to ask for the apple in the most round-about way possible, simply added on the end to something else so it feels less direct, draws less attention—ideally, Emerson just thinks it’s Clarke fucking with him and nothing more. She could have just asked for it directly, but, well. In a place like this you lived longer being paranoid than you did trusting.

Clarke looks away. “Better not be raining.”

“What do you mean?” Lexa says, confused.

“Up there,” Clarke explains. “If we ever step out from here. Better not be raining.”

Soon she’s chuckling to herself, though, because it probably will be, considering the way most shit in her life goes.

It’ll definitely be raining.

-

And for all Emerson’s flaws and the sheer medical miracle he’s achieved of living so long without a brain between his ears; the one thing he’s good at holding is his word. He’s the biggest prick around, sure. But he told her he’d use the money off Atom’s pelt to buy whatever she wanted and, sure enough, Clarke bolts upright from her bed when the thick metal door shoves open and Emerson comes stomping in.

Behind him, a couple guard dogs carry in a TV. They hold it careful, holding opposite sides, repeatedly glancing between the flat screen and the other’s eyes like to make sure they’re keeping their end of the bargain, aren’t going to fuck this up. No doubt Emerson warned them if they damaged this they’d never see daylight again.

They stop once they’re in the room, looking over to Emerson in question. He just sighs and waves a hand vaguely towards the floor in the corner. Once the TV is gently set down, one guard bolts out the room, comes back with a bunch of cables still in the plastic and kneels down beside the other. The both of them bicker with each other almost immediately as they figure out the wires. They’ve only just started when Clarke speaks up.

“I want it mounted,” she says, unable to stop herself.

Emerson slowly turns around and meets her smug grin. He doesn’t speak, just stares at her with his eyes miles away, probably vividly imagining how extravagant he’ll drag her death out to be. And after a whole damn minute later, once he’s wrung out the fantasy all he can, he blinks himself back, scoffs sharply.

“You’re getting shit else, dog.”

Clarke sighs, but Emerson turns around only to spin right back to face her again.

“Oh, no, you get _one_ more thing.” He scrounges through his pocket, pulls out an apple. When he goes to give it over, though, he retracts his hand just as it enters her cage. “Wait, you want a _good_ quality apple, don’t you? Here, let me test it for you. Make sure it’s good enough.”

Never breaking their shared stare, he takes a massive, obnoxious bite into the fruit.

“ _Oh_ yeah,” he mumbles through his mouthful, “that’s good.” Grinning, he hands it over again, and Clarke stands there dead still, staring at the half-bitten apple waiting in his hand and summoning every ounce of patience she’s ever possessed to not do something stupid that would fuck everything up. His face glows with smug triumph when she just snatches the half-eaten apple from him.

She wants to kill him so bad even the other guards in the room back up for the exit.

“Enjoy,” Emerson says, and kicks at her cage just because he can, before strolling out the room. His guards follow behind him.

Clarke makes herself focus on the TV that’s now running quietly in the back, and forcibly _not_ on the fact that her hands are trembling and she’s breathing too hard and fast through her nose, the space under her skin just itching and _burning_.

It takes an entire minute before the feeling goes away.

When she feels like she can open her mouth again without baring her teeth, her eyes make the slow path up to the TV stood in the room's corner. A movie is on, and Clarke frowns for just a moment, watching mountains scroll over the screen, an old-time song swinging cheerfully in the back, before realising that, of course, of _course_ Emerson had put on An American Werewolf in London.

“Original,” Clarke spits, baring her teeth even after all her efforts.

She doesn’t eat the apple. Not right away, anyway. Her sense of time has been pretty well fucked over after being down here so long, but she’s worked out that midday is around when Lexa opens her eyes, stops her mediating and waits expectantly for the door to open. At this point she’s become worryingly dependent on Lexa for the time, as it seems vampires as old as her always know where the sun is. Or at least know when it’s up.

It’s an instinct. The same way that Clarke will always know when the moon is full, no matter how deep underground she is. This is what they’re made for.

When lunch comes around Clarke stretches out on her bed, absorbed into the old werewolf classic still playing. Because, yeah, it might be a dick move on Emerson’s part, a _deliberate_ one too, but it’s decent enough entertainment. And it’s also special because it’d been one of the films she’d watched with her dad. With just _him_. Just the both of them, her mother far out of sight.

Abby forbade her from these types of films. It was because she didn’t want her growing up with the wrong idea, the wrong message—because this isn’t fiction for them. This is their _blood_ , their history. Their family. And there’s certain werewolf values that Abby was firm on raising her with. Razing villages down to a mess of blood and gore and bodies piled out like an ocean _not_ being one of them.

Jake, though.

“It’s a _crime_ for you to miss this,” he’d always say, shaking his head seriously, knelt down in the living room and sifting through the VHS’s he would keep hidden away right up in the back of the cupboard that Abby couldn’t reach. Clarke would nod along with him, doing her best to keep the grin off her face, because this was the joke between them and she refused to ruin it.

And then it was just them on the couch and the fuzzy TV screen and Jake’s quiet commentary every now and again, as the engineer in him couldn’t resist pointing certain aspects out, making sure she appreciated the little details.

It took her until she was older to realise, but eventually she worked out that Jake only did this when Abby pulled those particularly long shifts at the hospital, when she slept more at work than she did at home, and—he’d been doing this all to distract her. To give her something to look forward to, instead of always watching the windows and wondering where her mother was.

She doesn’t really remember the movies they’d watched anymore.

But she remembers being lifted, being gently carried after she’d inevitably fall asleep against her father’s shoulder. How Jake would always lay her back down in her bed so slowly, careful not to wake her, not realising she’d already woken the moment he picked her up.

Clarke doesn’t look away when the guard dogs come in and slide their meals over to them. The half-bitten apple sits next to the other side of her pillow, hidden out of direct sight, but the guards are already rushing out the room the second they’re able. Considering how the faces always change on who comes in here, she’s really starting to suspect whoever gets assigned here does so on the result of drawing the short straw, _not_ because they want to.

The moment the door is closed again, she looks over to her food.

She eats it periodically, more entranced with the movie. After a while she glances back to Lexa, expecting her to be right back to meditating now that there are no more interruptions, but she’s surprised to find her pressed close to the bars, engrossed in the film too. Lexa must sense her staring because her eyes shift and meet hers.

“He’s bigger than you,” Lexa says, nodding up to the werewolf running across the streets on the screen, sirens wailing behind him.

“Oh sure, make it a contest.”

Lexa shakes her head minutely, the smile only in her eyes.

They watch as finally the police swarm him, cops yelling frantically into their radios, cars backed up as a wall to block him in. He’s stuck down in the subway, pacing just out of the camera, but his growling is like an engine, like an omen from the trees. The last stand. One last go to be remembered.

“Am I prettier, though?” Clarke says, not looking away from the movie.

Lexa doesn’t answer. But that just makes her grin anyway.

Long after the film comes to its end and the credits roll—Clarke finishing up the last of the food—the guards come back. What she leaves right for last, though, is her apple. She keeps it in her hand, does her best to bite _around_ where Emerson had, because the idea of overlapping makes her gag. The guards come back in to take the tray back, but right after the guard dog gestures impatiently for her to push the tray over under the hatch, instead, she stands up.

The guard backs up the second she does, but she only looks at him unimpressed. “Relax. I just want the bathroom. Get someone, will you?”

She kicks the tray over to him. He hesitates, watches her before reluctantly bending down and snatching it back, nods at her. “Just wait,” he grounds out, and hurries out the room.

It doesn’t take long. This is the usual, and Clarke recognises the group of female guards that come in. And while for the cage fights she always has to be put down the minute the door is open, for this Clarke restrains the urge, holds her arms out when she’s told to so they can cuff them. Unlike the tranquiliser guns the guards use for transporting her to the fights, when it comes to marching down to the shared bathroom all the guards hold _real_ guns in their hands, no doubt full of silver, eyes cataloguing her every step, every twitch of her fingers.

If any attempted escape happens here, it ends in death immediately. At least when there’s a fight going on there’s a _reason_ to keep her alive, assure she’ll make it to that crowd waiting for her with deep, deep pockets. There’s no point trying a go for something here. They’re always careful to have it be one at a time, anyway. No mercy, no hesitation.

Clarke keeps the apple in her hands as they lead her out the cage, hands cuffed in front of her. She winces at the silver burning her wrists.

“Quick,” one of the guards snaps, pushing her forward.

“Yes ma’am,” Clarke says, and offers up a mocking salute. 

That gets another shove, harsher this time.

But she’s quiet the rest of the march. There’s more than one rifle trained right on her, yet Clarke plays relaxed as she follows the same way they always go, munching on the last of her apple. None of the guards say anything about it, just looking grizzly as always and glaring at everything. It makes her wonder if all the guards come here _because_ they’re already like that. Or if that’s just what this place does to you, no matter what side of the bars you’re walking on. Something in you gets killed either way.

When she bites near the core of the apple, though, almost finished, this time she’s careful as she chews, feeling for it with her tongue. They turn a corner and Clarke sees the familiar doorway, tiles replacing the flooring inside. It’s both for showers and the bathrooms. But right as they make their way in, Clarke reaches up and wipes at her mouth, like to clean off the excess.

What she actually does is nudge the few seeds out through her lips with her tongue, spits them into palm as she pulls her hand back, hides it in her fist. And then casual as anything, as they all step into the bathroom, she chucks the apple core off to the side onto the floor. One of the guards glares at her for that, though Clarke ignores them.

“Hands?” Clarke says once she’s waiting by the stalls, holding up her tied wrists expectantly. The guards all tense up for this like they always do, and Clarke isn’t blind to the click of every one of theirs safety, as one of the guards, swallowing and coming forward, hesitantly reaches out and slips the silver cuffs off.

Around her wrists, the skin is all red and burned. Any longer and the skin would’ve been smoking. But it’ll heal itself over the day. Clarke rubs it anyway, pushing open the stall door and only leaving it half shut because anymore and it’ll be kicked open fully.

Except, it’s just closed enough that when she reaches behind her to flush, she can balance two tiny seeds there, at the back rim of the seat. Quiet and out of sight. 

Thing is, she and Lexa are almost completely cut off from Octavia and the rest. That _almost_ includes the arena, but the other one that they’d all realised, crowded around the map, tracing over what they remembered, is that the bathrooms—the bathrooms are _shared_. And if you’re careful enough, and leave it in just the right spot, so no one sees, so the cleaner doesn’t swipe it up themselves—you could pass something along, if you wanted.

If they know where to look. 

-

They get confirmation that night.

Lexa’s home has become they’re go-to spot now, and Clarke is the first one in this time, pushing open the hut door and finding the planning room empty. So instead she pulls up one of the chairs squashed into the corner of the room and drags it over to the war table, kicking her feet up and waiting and waiting and waiting. It _feels_ like forever, but you can never trust your sense of time in a dream. Nothing ever truly feels solid.

Raven comes in next. She raises a brow at seeing Clarke so casually lounging around, but ultimately just grins and shakes her head. “Hey, mongrel.”

Despite the affection in Raven’s voice, Clarke still instinctively tenses up, before forcing her body to relax again. “Hey, Rae.” Raven at least seems to notice, though, because her face softens and she squeezes Clarke’s shoulder in apology as she passes by.

Raven’s penchant for nicknames isn’t anything new. Still, Raven had only jokingly called her dog _once_ before putting every conscious effort into never doing it again. It might’ve been warm and genuine and nothing like Emerson said it, but that didn’t matter. She’d lunged without thinking and they were both lucky that werecats had damn good reflexes.

Clarke doubts she’ll ever react the same way to that word again.

Lexa comes in barely seconds after and Clarke smiles when they meet eyes, instinctively reaching out her hand that Lexa loosely grabs as she approaches, bringing it up to her lips and pressing a soft kiss to her knuckles in greeting before letting it go but lingering by her side. Clarke’s cheeks burn and Raven watches the whole silent exchange with raised brows. At seeing that, Clarke glares, but Raven smirks anyway, unaffected.

Even if Octavia wasn’t the last one in, they all know who’s in next without even looking up. Because while the three of _them_ —a werewolf, a vampire, and a werecat—were all born with the instinctual need to slip into rooms as quiet as possible, always drawn to the shadows; Octavia has _none_ of those instincts.

The door slams open almost off its hinges, Octavia bursting through with a massive jittery grin splitting open her face.

All three of them snap their attention to the unexpected noise, but it takes barely a second of wide-eyed staring before they all freeze, knowing that the excitement Octavia is practically shaking with can only mean one thing. Clarke jumps up to her feet, eyes rapidly scanning her up and down.

“You got it?” Clarke breathes.

Octavia nods so excitedly her head almost falls off. “Found it exactly where you said. Didn’t suspect a thing! I’ve passed them to Monty, and _shit,_ but you should have seen his face when he held them. Almost wanted to give him a fucking room.”

“He thinks they’ll work, then?” Lexa checks, almost breathless. Which is kinda funny for a vampire.

“Says they’re perfect,” Octavia beams.

Relief floods her so badly she almost sways. She blindly reaches for Lexa’s wrist behind her, squeezing like a vice. Lexa doesn’t say anything in response, but Clarke feels the way she steps closer to her, almost pressed up against her from behind. A hand presses against the small of her back and stays there, unwavering.

She thinks moments like these make waking up about a thousand times worse.

“So what now?” Raven says, drawing everyone back. Some of the giddy excitement leaks from the room. Getting a way to unlock the cages doesn’t solve the problem of still _being_ in a prison.

Clarke exhales the last of the dizzy hope from her shaky lungs and clears her throat. “We’ll probably need a distraction or something, right? Something to divert the guards.”

Octavia had explained early on that instead of having the thick, menacing door that her and Lexa have that leaves little fear they’ll ever break through a weight like that, Octavia’s block is _older_ , doesn’t have such an impenetrable door but wider space and more guards pacing and standing around. 

Lexa nods, realising the same. “It’s unlikely you’ll be able to perform anything without a distraction to draw the guards away.”

“I could pick a fight,” Raven offers, and sounds entirely too eager. Her ensuing grin is more than a little unnerving. “I can _certainly_ drag the attention to my side of the room.”

Clarke shakes her head, though. “No. If anything, that’ll just draw even _more_ guards to you. They’ll call for backup and there’ll be no chance for it. We want them _away_ from you guys, so you’ll have enough time to get the cages open. We get one shot at this. If enough of the cages aren’t open before they realise, all of this will be for nothing.”

“What if _you_ start a fight, then? Bring them to your neck of the woods.”

“Emerson would just tranq me the moment he turns up,” Clarke grumbles. Stupid bloody tranquiliser. At this point she’s going to develop a fucking tolerance.

They all fall quiet, lost in thinking.

Lexa is the one to break it. She glances up, a crease in her brow. “Are there fewer guards when there’s a fight on? An official one, I mean.”

Octavia thinks it over before nodding.

Lexa shoots Clarke a nervous look before she speaks. Clarke immediately straightens up in response, already having a bad feeling about where this was leading. “Can you overhear the fights from where you are?”

“I can,” Raven says.

“Have you been here long enough to overhear a fight that involves myself or Clarke?” Lexa’s voice gets faster the more she speaks, chasing the end of something. Raven nods that she has. “And have you noticed a difference in the amount of guards that linger back where there’s a fight involving us, versus a fight involving others?”

Raven frowns. “I guess so… I haven’t been here a crazy amount of time, but, the crowd is always so much _louder_ when it’s one of you. There might be less guards? Apparently you always put on a hell of a show.” She offers a shrug. “I’d sneak off to watch it too.”

Clarke thinks about the difference of how many guards come in when a fight involves Lexa. How they fill up the room.

Slowly, Lexa turns her head to meet Clarke’s eyes. “If _we_ were to fight, I’d expect there would be far fewer guards around them.”

Clarke stares right back at her and doesn’t speak.

“Why would it matter if it’s you two together?” Octavia says, genuinely confused. “Can’t _one_ of you just fight?”

Raven looks incredulously at her. “Are you for real, O? Do you seriously fucking _not_ see the way they are with each other?”

“With each other?” Octavia repeats.

“Rae,” Clarke warns, but Raven merely glares at her and waves her off.

“No, come on. Even _I_ have been hearing about it from the fucking guards. _Everyone_ knows how weird the Commander is with Clarke. They didn’t stop gossiping for weeks after she pulled that stunt with her on the full moon. Lexa’s right, a fight between them will draw a _lot_ of goddamn attention.”

Octavia’s eyes snap towards them. Her and Lexa remain suspiciously quiet, and Octavia’s eyes are jumping rapidly between them now, finally taking in how close they are, how Clarke’s shoulder is tipped into Lexa’s side like it’s natural.

“Oh,” Octavia whispers.

Raven looks like she wants to make another insult, but Clarke’s sharp glare seems to be enough to dissuade her any further. They’re all tired and stressed. A fight between them all is the last thing they have time for.

Clarke sighs and runs a hand through her hair, locking her fingers behind her head. “It could work. Assuming we even _get_ them to allow a fight between us, it doesn’t change the fact that in this scenario Lexa and I would be cut off. The gates will lock us in. If something goes wrong, we won’t be able to reach you.”

Raven and Octavia share the same confused glance. Clarke suddenly remembers that she and Lexa are the only ones in this room who have _actually_ been in the fights. “We could pick them too?” Octavia suggests, but Lexa sighs.

“They’re not worked like that. It’s a weight—there’s no lock, you have to be on the right side. The guards have to open it.”

“Could threaten one,” Raven suggests.

“If it gets to that point, the guards aren’t going to negotiate shit. The moment they catch on, see any of us outside our cells; it will be mayhem,” Clarke says.

Silence sinks in between them. After a heavy beat, though, Lexa blinks slowly. When she speaks her voice is unusually quiet. “There _is_ one way to guarantee the guards open the gates.”

Clarke narrows her eyes before the realisation hits and she steps back, her breath leaving her all at once. “ _No_.”

Lexa doesn’t falter. “If you pretend to kill me, then they’ll open the gates.”

“And how exactly do you expect me to _pretend_ , Lexa? Death isn’t something easy to fake.”

Lexa considers this. Then, she nods firmly, looks up to her and says, “Rip my heart out.”

-

Octavia and Raven vacate the room quick once the yelling starts.

At first, Clarke is just standing there in the aftermath of Lexa’s words, the silence seething all around them like a hole in the ocean, and even the rest of the room are dead quiet but unlike the wide-eyed surprise on Raven and Octavia all Clarke feels is agonised rage.

Because of _course_ this is way Lexa wants it to go. It’s like she’s physically incapable of not offering her life for others; the first to take the bullet and the last to back down. “You want to _what_?” Clarke hisses, and it all goes downhill from there.

Lexa just calmly repeats what she said before. _That’s_ when the yelling started—on Clarke’s account, naturally—and it wasn’t seconds later that the two other women in the room figured themselves useless in the conversation and, more importantly, did _not_ want to get swept in that impending explosion, and so high-tailed it right through the door. Clarke doesn’t even look to them, though Lexa shoots a mournful glance towards the way of their retreat like she wants to escape the blast range too.

Fat fucking chance.

Clarke steps into Lexa’s line of sight, cutting off her view of the exit. Lexa’s eyes snap back to hers, and already she’s sighing, abandoning the hope.

“You can’t be serious,” Clarke snaps, her upper lip snarling up without realising.

Lexa meets her stare and doesn’t blink. “I wouldn’t truly die from it, Clarke. A vampire’s heart is impervious to all but two things: fire and wood. The chances of ripping it out and killing me are immeasurably low.”

“So there’s still a chance?” Clarke counters.

“If you were _reckless_ with it, yes,” Lexa snaps back, frustration breaking apart the mask she’s always so good at keeping. She exhales loudly through her nose, gesturing with each word. “My heart does not have to be _inside_ me to kill me. If my heart is staked, even if it happens _outside_ of me, in the open: I will still die. That’s the only risk.”

“The _only_ risk? How sure are of this? Have you seen this happen before?”

Lexa hesitates just a second; just long enough for Clarke’s vision to flare gold. “Anya had lost her heart once, before she turned me. A hunter had cut it out of her, but instead of killing her, he’d kept it locked away. As leverage. So she would do whatever he asked; _kill_ whoever he asked. And she couldn’t kill him because he’d hidden it and no one but him knew where it was. So, she was trapped.”

Clarke frowns, some of the incensed fury in her wavering, losing its hold. “So… what? He made her into an attack dog?”

“He _tried_ ,” Lexa corrects, her voice dark and hardened. “The way that you can always find your loved ones, we are similar in that respect. But it’s to our hearts. We will always know where it lies. The magic that keeps us conscious; it all begins and nestles there, in our hearts. This is why we die when it is destroyed, and even when we’re decapitated—because it cuts off the magical connection to our heart.”

Clarke swallows, has to force herself to ignore the way Lexa’s voice seems to have unintentionally softened when she talks of her heart. How it doesn’t matter how far it is, she will always, always know whose hands it sits in. The way she stares so openly at her as she says this. It reminds her too vividly of their first dream together.

“That just makes it more dangerous,” Clarke says, trying to get her footing back. “That’s the point, isn’t it? At least with you it’s protected, and just _how_ exactly do you think they’re going to react once you’re vulnerable like that? They’ll just demand me to stake it in front of them.”

But Lexa firmly shakes her head. “No, they don’t know. They don’t even know about the extent of Octavia’s abilities, and they never will, because they will never _ask_ when they think themselves so above it all. Remember, they didn’t even know about you and moon. We’ve only gotten this far and lasted this long _because_ of their arrogance and their pride. We can use this.”

“And doing this is banking your _entire survival_ on this fucking assumption,” Clarke seethes, pushing into her space even though Lexa doesn’t move, their faces inches away. “This isn’t—don’t you _realise_? You’re asking me to literally— _literally_ —take your heart into my hands and just hope for the fucking best?”

“It needs to look real.”

Clarke lets out a manic laugh, gesturing out wildly with her hands. “And the chances of it accidently _becoming_ real are pretty fucking high! I mean, Jesus, Lexa, what you’re asking is—”

Lexa catches her hands, brings them to her chest and _holds_ them there. And unlike the wrath that Clarke was expecting for violating her space like this, Lexa’s eyes are solid and sure, drilling right into her own and full of such honest sincerity that Clarke immediately loses her voice.

“I trust you, Clarke,” Lexa whispers, never looking away.

It feels like she can’t breathe. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you _die_. I can’t—” she stops, drops her eyes down till they’re settled on where Lexa is still pressing Clarke’s palm into her chest. So close she doesn’t even need to _feel_ it to see the tremble in her fingers. She’s never been good with letting things go. It’s like her hands just don’t know how. “You’re always dying for someone. Don’t you ever get tired?”

“I’m very tired,” Lexa admits softly. A slight smile ticks up her mouth. “Admittedly, it also doesn’t help matters when I’ve got a werewolf constantly interrupting my sleep, either. I can’t even _nap_ anymore. Do you know how rare that is for a vampire? All we’re good at is napping.”

A half-suppressed laugh escapes before she can stop herself. “Don’t be funny. I’m mad at you.”

“Right, sorry.”

Clarke’s smile doesn’t last long and it dies around the same time Lexa’s does, heat spiking behind her eyes and forcing her to blink. When she breathes in, something closes up in her throat and Lexa must sense it, somehow, because then without a word she releases her hold on Clarke’s wrists only so she can wrap her arms around her, pull her into her chest like she belongs there.

And maybe she does. Just a bit.

“I could be the one,” Clarke murmurs, into Lexa’s neck, though she closes her eyes soon after and breathes in her scent like she’s been wanting to for so, so long. It only half-works—because the dream can only carry them so far—but you can drown in a sink if you’re desperate enough. So Clarke burrows in and tries to lose herself in it, anyway.

She smells like salt and earth and the mist over the ground after a night of rain.

“It won’t work with you,” Lexa murmurs back into the top of her head. Clarke’s body goes rigid beneath her, but Lexa doesn’t let her pull away, instead laughs softly and kisses her hair to appease her. The mindless action has Clarke’s heart stuttering. “No, listen. It’s not because you’re weak or anything as foolish as that. If anything, it’s the opposite. They want blood, Clarke. They want a fight and a show and a bloody, bloody end. It _can’t_ be you, because you’re alive. You have something to lose.”

Clarke balls the back of Lexa’s shirt under her fingers. “I have something to lose too.”

Lexa doesn’t speak for a while. Her arms squeeze around her tighter, though, and Clarke _swears_ she feels Lexa shaking beneath her hands, that when Clarke noses under her jaw Lexa sucks in a sharp breath that rings in her ears like a gunshot.

“Will you promise me you’ll survive if I do this?” Clarke says, so quiet it’s more just her mouthing the words.

Lexa hears them, anyway. She always does. “Will you promise to be good with my heart?”

Clarke tries not to cry.

-

They meet up one final time in Clarke’s old house.

Where all of this began.

There’s an energy buzzing all around the room that they’ve never felt before, all nervously glancing to each other barely breathing, going over the last of the last again even if it’s all already decided, now. They know what they have to do, what _needs_ to be done before then that’s it. It’ll all be over.

The thought is terrifying either way. It’ll end, that’s without question. But it will either be with her breathing out her last breath, or worse, stepping _outside_ and breathing in her first, tasting the fresh air like she’s never been above ground before. And truly, it really _is_ starting to feel like that. Dreams might blur the way time moves, but that’s _nothing_ compared to waking up in the same place over and over with no daylight to go off. No sunrise, no moonrise. Just yourself.

At least in death you don’t have to wake up.

Now though, they’ll all just talking circles. Even Clarke knows that. She knows Lexa does, too, because unlike Octavia and Raven who are arguing about nothing back and forth, Clarke can _feel_ Lexa’s eyes boring into the side of her head. But every time she glances up, looks over to her—Lexa’s already turned away, looking anywhere but her. It frustrates her enough that she’s almost tempted to call her out for it even if O and Raven are _right there_ , though she doesn’t for the same reason that Lexa keeps glancing away.

This is their last night. The last time they’ll have each other like this, nothing between them.

Clarke’s hands are shaking at the thought.

“Don’t we need a signal? For when we start unlocking the cages?” Octavia presses, finally gathering attention from more than one quarter of the room. Clarke’s eyes still linger on Lexa’s face for too long before meeting Octavia’s searching gaze. “Hey, you could howl, right?”

Clarke’s top lip curls up at that. “ _Howl_? What, should I start pissing on trees too?”

Lexa sighs from next to her. “Clarke…”

“What? It’s insulting. I don’t _howl_ ,” Clarke snaps. “I’m not a fucking dog.”

The snarl leaks into her voice before she can stop it, a harsh enough sound that Octavia just watches her with wide-eyes while Raven’s brow pushes right up to her hairline, more amused than actually afraid.

“Down girl,” Raven says, ignoring Clarke’s answering glare. “Just a suggestion.”

Under the table something soft brushes the tight curl of her fists, gently pries her fingers open until they’re loose, spreading out. Clarke’s eyes cut over to Lexa, like to see if she’s really doing this, and unlike before Lexa meets her head on, doesn’t flinch.

Clarke is the one to look away first. Her lungs feel like they’re folding in.

Just for a second, though, she brushes up against Lexa’s fingers before letting go.

“We don’t need a signal,” Lexa says, breaking the awkward tension. They all glance to her. “You said you can hear the fights from where you are, yes? None of you should make your move before the fight is underway. When our fight begins, _that’s_ when you open the cages. There’ll be far fewer guards around.”

“Get Raven out first,” Clarke adds on. “Free the ones who can fight before the rest. You’ll need people to hold back and take out the guards once they catch on while you free the others.”

That restless energy settles between them again, rises up like that last go for the surface, when all the oxygen is burned and exhausted. One last bid for freedom.

Raven glances between her and Lexa. “You’re sure you will be able to get them have you both fight?”

Clarke grimaces, though she nods. “I know what to do with Emerson.”

Lexa’s eyes flick to her again. They’ve talked it through before and while she had argued then, asking if it would really be enough, Clarke had just shaken her head, assured that it would. That she _knew_ Emerson, in the same way that he knows her. It’s all about the weak point with them. What will hurt the most.

“Well!” Raven claps her hands together, grinning at them. “Seems like we’ve got our pieces all good to go. Now it’s just if I’m getting a quick death or a slow one.”

Clarke sighs. “Real positive, Rae.”

Raven just shrugs. “What the hell, right? Not like we’ve got a lot to lose.”

They really don’t. The knowledge is… intensely depressing, but hey. It’s something.

“Let me go?” Raven asks Octavia, waves a vague hand towards the ceiling. “I want some _normal_ sleep before I wake up. This shit is exhausting.”

Octavia looks to the rest of them first. “You two as well?”

Lexa goes to reply, but Clarke grabs her wrist and squeezes deathly tight, cutting her off. “Do you need to be in the dreams with us to keep us together?” She asks instead, ignoring how confused Lexa looks next to her.

Octavia’s face scrunches up. “Uh, not really. I used to, but we’ve doing this like every night now. I’ve gotten… a lot better.”

“Good,” Clarke says, and hates how breathless she sounds. Even Octavia gives her a weird look. “I mean, I just want to talk to Lexa for a bit. Privately.”

Octavia doesn’t fight it. “Sure, but you should know the morning is only like, a few hours off. And I won’t be able to warn you, if I’m not here then you’ll just wake up without warning.” She winces, and gestures sideways with her hand. “It can be jarring.”

“That’s fine,” Clarke says, way too quickly, but Octavia just gives them both one last nervous smile before waving to them, and then in the next blink she’s gone, Raven with her. Somehow the old study feels _more_ suffocating without them. Because now it’s only the two of them, no one else.

Clarke still pushes it a beat, scanning the room as if Octavia will pop in any second.

Lexa is frowning by the time she brings her attention back. “What was that for?”

Clarke stares at her, forcing in a steadying breath that does nothing to steady her. “Because this.” And she reaches forward, and tangles their hands together. “No bars,” Clarke whispers, and glances up, Lexa completely still in front of her.

The air shifts and thickens between them. Clarke drifts closer to her, though when she steps in Lexa steps back with it, eyes wide and terrified. “We can’t… we _shouldn’t_ —”

The rest stops short in her throat when Clarke only keeps pushing closer and it ends with Lexa backed up against the desk, one hand gripping dangerously hard to the table edge and the other hovering over Clarke’s stomach, fingers twitching like they can’t decide whether to push her back or pull her in.

“This is a dream,” Clarke says, almost right into Lexa’s mouth. Her words seem to break through finally, though, because Lexa stills beneath her.

She leans back slightly, but Clarke allows it, especially after seeing just how badly Lexa’s pupils have dilated, flooded out the green. “This is a dream,” Lexa repeats. Her eyes can’t seem to decide where to land. “So… it doesn’t really count.”

“Not really,” Clarke says softly.

Lexa’s stare drills right into hers. There’s a long and infuriating beat of silence, where they’re both just _standing_ there waiting for the end, until finally, Lexa caves first and the hand that’d previously been hovering over Clarke stomach now comes up and snakes behind Clarke’s neck, pulls her in slow and trembling and perfect.

It silences out the world like nothing has. Despite how _desperately_ she’s been thinking about this exact moment, wondering it ever since that first dream in the field together: the first tentative press of soft lips rocks her anyway, leaves her frozen a beat.

And then it’s like the spark after days of dry heat and all those weeks and weeks of shared confessions and lingering secret looks and those rare, forbidden brushes of contact all just surge out at once and Clarke pushes back into her _hard_ , kissing her like she never will again. And realistically she probably won’t.

Lexa seems to take it as permission. In barely a heartbeat she spins them and now _Clarke_ is up against the desk. Except Lexa breaks the kiss so she can reach around and swipe all the clutter to the floor, grasp under Clarke’s thighs and hoist her up, set her on the cleared space.

Clarke can’t help but grin, even if her legs snag around Lexa’s hips. “Hey, who’s gonna clean that up?” she mumbles, right against Lexa’s mouth. “You think I have a maid?”

“Shut up,” Lexa says back through a laugh, nipping her lip in reprimand. Clarke’s grin just widens, and so Lexa takes a different route, instead grabbing the bottom of her shirt and ripping it up over her head. It shuts up Clarke pretty much instantly, her entire brain short-circuiting at the offered and _toned_ muscle on display. No fucking wonder she never got worried about the fights.

Lexa looks exceptionally pleased at the reaction, but she leans in to capture Clarke’s lips again only to stop from hands shooting out against her chest, Clarke’s eyes gone wide from what she’d discovered.

“You have _tattoos_?” Clarke breathes.

“Yes,” Lexa says, completely distracted, stare still firmly stuck on Clarke’s mouth and trying to lean in again.

Clarke stops her just as she had before. “Just on your arm?” she checks, embarrassingly excited.

Lexa huffs this time. “No, on my back too. It’s very boring, so let’s just—”

“Show me,” Clarke demands.

And for the first time since Clarke’s _ever_ met her, Lexa actually, genuinely pouts. “But we were…”

Clarke ignores Lexa’s pleading look and rolls her eyes, grabs Lexa’s waist herself, urging the woman to spin around. Lexa does so begrudgingly, scowling the entire way while muttering under her breath that it’s not like they’re on a _time limit_ or anything and there are far better things they could be doing right now. 

It feels stupid in hindsight. With how Lexa always wore long sleeves, she’d just naturally assumed that meant it was it. But of course a _vampire_ will have tattoos. Something that old, that weathered: you’d _need_ marks, a reminder. An acknowledgement. To say _I was here_.

Plus, well.

Everyone gets bored with their appearance.

God forbid having _centuries_ of that boredom.

The tattoo runs the entire length of her spine. A broken infinity sits at her neck like a crown, followed by an empty circle cut through vertically, and then all below are lines and drips that trickle like blood until it reaches her lower back, series of filled in black circles replacing the trail.

Clarke traces the whole path, fingertips gliding over the solid muscle of Lexa’s shoulders and following each memory in ink. Goosebumps trail after the entire journey like an afterthought. When she reaches the end, though, she doesn’t pull away but flattens her palm flat against the small of her back.

“Can I ask what it means?” she whispers into Lexa’s ear, her other hand drifting around Lexa’s side and feeling the ridges over her stomach. Lexa sways backwards into the touch.

She takes a second to answer. It probably doesn’t help that Clarke gets distracted with nibbling her ear, the hand on her back now slipping a little lower, teasing under the waistband of her pants. “Uh,” Lexa says eloquently, and has to swallow before speaking. Clarke only knows this because she _feels_ Lexa’s throat bob from where her lips brush against Lexa’s neck. “They’re—the, the circles, they’re for the vampires I have sired, but… didn’t survive.”

For this, Clarke pulls back a little. Keeps her words soft. “You’ve sired vampires?”

“I’m old enough to,” Lexa says, matching her tone. Even without being able to see her face it’s obvious the pain that strains her voice. “Only one is still alive, though. The others…”

Clarke loops her arms instead around Lexa’s waist, pulls her close until they’re flush together. She offers an apologetic kiss onto Lexa’s bare shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” Lexa twists her head back to look at her. “Can we talk about something else?”

Clarke hums through a slow smile. “Who said anything about talking?”

Lexa’s own grin spreads, wider than anything she’s ever given. Clarke’s hands are already creeping up Lexa’s back again, and by the time she’s spun around in her arms Clarke’s undone Lexa’s bra with deft fingers. Lexa kisses her hard, sighing into it like nothing else exists. Clare barely has a moment to savour it before she’s pulling away, blinding chasing after and whimpering rather embarrassingly, but Lexa’s already distracted with kissing down her jaw.

She pulls Lexa closer with her legs, can _feel_ the smirk Lexa tries to hide into Clarke’s neck, kissing and skimming her teeth over the soft skin like that can hide it. She almost calls her out for it, but then Lexa finds _that_ particular spot just under her jaw and all that tumbles out her mouth is a moan. Lexa stays there, leaving what Clarke knows would have been an obnoxious hickey in the morning, while the hand not curled around her lower back for balance slides up underneath Clarke’s shirt, fingers dragging the whole way up her stomach and then stopping, thumbing the edge of her bra like a question.

Clarke pushes her back, and Lexa makes some desperate noise until she realises it is only so Clarke can scramble to rid her own shirt too, and then she’s rushing to help her. The moment she’s free and her bra’s gone with it Lexa is right back to where she was, though her efforts seem even more determined now, her hand coming up and palming her chest while Clarke gasps and arches into the touch.

She’s revelling in the blissful sensation—only just about to stutter out that they should _really_ find a bedroom—but then she feels something too sharp catch in her neck. Clarke’s eyes snap open and she pushes Lexa back, holding her shoulders and staring with wide-eyes, still panting heavily. Even more disbelieving is finding exactly what she’d suspected: Lexa’s eyes that are dark, _too_ dark. Too red.

And the edge of fangs that are pushing into her bottom lip. The fangs that are suddenly a whole lot longer.

Clarke just stares at her in disbelief. “Lexa, were… were you about to…?”

“No,” Lexa blurts, in probably the most guilty way possible.

“Oh my god, you _were_.”

Lexa shifts her gaze away, looking genuinely embarrassed. It’s a look Clarke’s never seen on her before. But already, she’s laughing it off, gently grabbing Lexa’s chin and tilting it up so she will actually meet her eyes.

“It’s fine, Lex. Relax. Don’t worry, it’s… kinda hot. You just surprised me.”

Even though the dream dampens her senses some, Clarke can _smell_ the way Lexa reacts to the admission. “So you’re saying I can…” her words trail off, but the ring of red around Lexa’s inflated pupils seems to _burn_ almost, and it probably says something bad about her that the sight of Lexa so clearly unravelling at the prospect is turning her on.

“Just don’t go crazy with it, alright?” Clarke says, waiting until Lexa nods a little dazedly. “Good. Now follow me.”

Sliding off the desk brings immediate relief. That thing was _not_ made to be sat on for long periods of time. They fall back together though, Lexa chasing after her for a kiss even if it ends with Clarke laughing against her mouth, and when she blindly reaches for the doorknob and twists it open, expecting to step through into the hallway—she falters at her foot meeting the soft material of the carpet, not the cold wood floors of the corridor.

Clarke wildly looks around and finds she’s somehow already in the old guest bedroom they had.

Perks of being in a lucid dream, or whatever.

But something changes now that they’re in the privacy of the bedroom. Before it’d been a heated, frantic rush but now is when the reality of what they are doing seems to set in. They undress the last of their clothing slow and deliberate. When Lexa lays her on the bed, she crawls up her body mapping every inch, each brush of her lips and the wet heat of tongue a promise and an apology all at once.

Clarke won’t forgive her for this. Because forgiving implies _regret_ on at least one of their parts, and there’s not a single fucking thing that Clarke regrets between them. Not a second. And never _this_.

There’s no way to tell how far morning is, but they still take their time as if they ever had it. Lexa is slow and loving as she finally makes the path back up to her mouth, taking so long that Clarke is almost writhing beneath her, desperate and panting and seconds away from just grabbing Lexa’s hand and forcing it where she _needs_ herself.

But Lexa kisses her like the world isn’t burning around them, pushes up on her elbows just enough so she can speak.

“No matter how this ends,” she murmurs, her voice trembling enough that Clarke’s eyes flutter open, and she freezes at finding that Lexa’s eyes are wet, that there’s stray tears streaming down her cheek. Clarke has never seen her cry. Stupidly, a small part of her believed Lexa didn’t know how to anymore.

But Lexa stops, and pulls in a fortifying breath. Meets her gaze.

“No matter how this ends, I want you to know that I will never forget you. This place, it… it has killed me, in some way, I think. But not you. Never _you_.”

Clarke exhales, feels her whole chest shake with it. “I won’t forget you, too.”

Lexa’s smile is soft. And then, maybe because they can both sense the dangerous way this is turning, Lexa leans down to meet her, her tongue slipping through her lips right as the hand still lingering near Clarke’s hips _finally_ gives in and Clarke gasps and arches up into the kiss.

The rest is a bit of a blur; the kiss becoming increasingly messy until eventually Lexa breaks away so she can focus her mouth on her neck instead, Clarke’s hips grinding faster and faster when just before it all breaks over, that blissful heat building in her stomach—Lexa pulls back just enough so she can talk, the words hot and breathless against Clarke’s ear.

“Can I, can I—” Lexa keeps repeating it, her voice _strained_ and trembling and full of such desperation she can’t even finish the sentence.

“Yes,” Clarke gasps, and almost immediately a spike of pain erupts at her neck, only to sooth into pleasure a moment later, Lexa’s groan muffled against her.

And that’s all it takes.

-

It feels weird waking up twice over.

It messes with her head, because when Clarke closes her eyes, prepared to drift off to sleep with Lexa’s naked body pressed up against her, lets her breathing even out: her eyes are already snapping open again. Only _this_ time she’s staring at the metal bars like always.

Her brain takes a second to piece the whirlwind of sensations together, blindly reaching out for behind only for her hand to fall through air. She jerks up at that, realises where she is, finally. What they’d done. Slowly, Clarke blinks back into awareness, unconsciously reaching up and feeling her neck.

There’s nothing, of course. No marks, no evidence. Just the memory.

When Clarke glances over to Lexa, she finds that Lexa is already staring directly at her. Except, her eyes are trained exactly on Clarke’s hand. The path it’d made up to her neck. To make matters worse, Lexa had slept while pretending to mediate, and it means that Clarke can clearly see how her fingers curl into tight fists, clawing into her thigh. It’s probably a good thing she doesn’t have to worry about blood circulation.

“Morning,” Clarke says weakly. The tension stretches out between them like a ravine.

Lexa’s eyes still haven’t left her neck. She only stops once Clarke raises a brow, and then Lexa is blushing like she never has and looks away, instead glaring her frustration into the wall. Her chest still feels like it’s inflating and burning, but the sincere and _human_ reaction that Lexa had shown makes a familiar grin spread across her face.

“Who knew _you_ would be the kinky one.”

“You said yes, didn’t you?” Lexa counters, glancing back without missing a beat.

Clarke shrugs. “Fair.”

They stare at each other, lasting less than thirty seconds until the sheer absurdity of the moment becomes too much and they both laugh, Lexa rubbing the back of her neck bashfully in a way that Clarke hates she finds attractive. She’d thought caving into the desire would have _lessened_ this whole thing, but now that she knows exactly what she’s missing, what she will lose—if anything, it’s just made it so much worse.

But not enough to regret.

“So,” Clarke says, the laughter trailing off but the smile staying, turning soft at the end.

“So,” Lexa echoes.

There’s a long pause.

Clarke leans a little closer to the bars, keeping her voice at a mock whisper. “You think we can convince O to leave us alone again tonight?”

“ _Clarke_ ,” Lexa admonishes, but it comes out more like a laugh. “No, we can’t—that, that _time_ is serious and should only be for business.”

“Oh, we did a _lot_ of business.”

Lexa shoots her an exasperated look for that. “No. Stop it.”

“Come on, give me _one_ good reason why we can’t?” Clarke says, gesturing out to her triumphantly.

It’s supposed to be a joke. They both know there won’t be any more shared dreams unless something goes wrong in the between. But Lexa loses her humour, all traces wiping away and something else entirely settling on her face. “Because I want it to be real,” she whispers.

Clarke’s smile falls too. “It was real.” Something closes up in her throat and she has to swallow, force her voice not to break. “It _is_ real.”

Lexa doesn’t answer.

“Do… you regret it?” Clarke asks tentatively, after the lengthy silence.

“I regret nothing with you,” Lexa murmurs, no hesitation. Like it really is all that simple. And maybe it is, when it comes down to it. Maybe they were running from nothing.

Clarke relaxes into back into the bars and rolls her head, staring up at the rocky ceiling to cover up the way the world’s gone blurry. “You probably should.”

“Probably,” Lexa smiles.

-

In the end, it really doesn’t take that much to goad Emerson.

It’s the same reason why Clarke immediately jumped onto the plan, anyway. Hate is blinding. They’ve built it so much between them in so little time, are both well aware that the only reason either of them are still breathing is the metal stood between them. Emerson would strangle her in her sleep the second he could and Clarke would give in to the impulse to tear his throat out with her teeth if she had even the slightest opportunity.

So it really doesn’t take that much when they give him an opening. He’ll take _anything_ if it means watching her suffer.

He stomps in with another guard to give over their meals for the night and just before he comes, the moment that Lexa hears the signature pace of his steps shuffling towards them: she looks over to Clarke, nods, and then they’re both shifting so they’re right up against the bars with each other, reaching through the gaps with their hands.

Lexa’s hand feels soft like always. It takes her back every time, despite herself. Having all that violence be so gentle will never not throw her off. It’s like a mystery that makes perfect sense. A clarity that can’t be understood.

The door heaves open and Emerson steps in right as they abandon their hold on each other, rip their hands back into their own cages. Emerson freezes, his eyes wide and frantic, jumping between them, trying to make sense of it. Working out if he’d seen what he had really seen. Usually—if he ends up coming down for their rations—it’s with a sneer and an insult and a rattling of the cage.

Now, though, he’s quiet. Not watching them, but what’s _between_ them. How close they are. That maybe, _maybe_ , it’s gone too far. It’s crossed into the impossible.

And then he’s blinking and that same smug grin spreads like nothing’s changed. He comes forward and kicks over the tray food over to her and the nervous guard behind him hurries over to Lexa’s cage and slides the bag of blood under too. But it’s so obvious, the new life that’s breathed into him. That new shine in his eyes, the one that’s almost the exact same as what she’d seen in Lexa’s. It means hope. When you’ve finally, finally found a way in.

He doesn’t show up the next few days. Clarke was half expecting it, because now she’s glancing up to that camera tucked away in the very corner of the room, the one hidden by shadows and dust and never moves, never even twitches. It didn’t take long to suss out the new signs of life in it, though. Even Clarke can hear the quiet buzz when the lens zooms in, the stiff creak of the hinges when the camera shifts and follows the exact path that Clarke’s hand makes when it creeps through Lexa’s bars and slides under Lexa’s palm.

Clarke has always assumed she’s being watched, but it’s never felt so _blatant_ before. It feels intrusive in an entirely different way.

They can use it, though. And Emerson is stupid enough that Clarke’s sure they need to spell it out in big fat block letters, paint the red target so wide that _surely_ even a blind man couldn’t miss, and so that’s why when she hears the telltale shift of the camera in the corner that’s no longer collecting dust, she pushes right up to the edge of her cage.

Lexa is meditating next to her. Because of course she is.

Still. She’s close enough Clarke can reach through and grab the bottom of her shirt, tug at it.

Lexa sighs through her nose. Doesn’t move.

Clarke tugs again, harder.

“I am very clearly in the middle of something, Clarke,” Lexa murmurs without opening her eyes.

Clarke arches a brow, even if Lexa can’t even see. “You meditate every single day. How does missing five minutes count as being interrupted when all you do is nothing?”

“It’s not _nothing_ ,” Lexa corrects, frowning. “Believe it or not, some of us have been here a while and would like to keep our sanity’s intact.”

“Sanity’s overrated.”

Lexa hums. “You would think that, wouldn’t you?”

Clarke swats her arm and Lexa finally gives in, opens her eyes with the biggest sigh yet and looks over to Clarke like she’s just murdered her dog right in front of her and not just interrupted her daily meditation session. “Yes?” Lexa says, rather pointedly.

“I need you to kiss me.”

Lexa stares at her. Any annoyance, any of that usual banter drops from her face. Her expression _should_ be unreadable, but Clarke knows her too well. It sort of happens when you have exactly one person as company for two entire months in the same room over and over.

Afraid. Lexa looks afraid.

It’s something that Clarke has never seen before. Except—no, not never. About half a week ago, she’d seen that exact expression before. Right before Clarke stepped up to her, leant in close.

What monsters they make.

“What are you talking about?” Lexa says finally, voice strained.

“It’s all about the show, right?” Clarke says through a grin, though she keeps her voice low, so no one else could hear. The TV’s running quietly in the back, anyway. It should cover any sound in the off chance.

Lexa doesn’t stop staring at her and Clarke’s grin falters, losing the bravado she’d only barely conjured.

Finally, she blinks, eyes shifting up to over Clarke’s shoulder. To that corner in the room. There’s still those lingering traces of fear in her eyes that Clarke can’t even begin to try figure out, but when Clarke tentatively reaches her hand out, loosely grabs the neck of Lexa’s collar and tugs her forward, gentle so she knows it’s a choice—Lexa lets her, comes forward.

It feels like a power she’s never had. It’s been so easy to forget these past months, with the way they’ve spent each and every day together so Clarke’s seen every side of her.

 _Almost_ , at least. Because if there’s one thing the dreams together have vividly reminded her of, it’s the way that Octavia and Raven and even _Monty_ act around Lexa. The way they all hesitate, are quick to back up and throw up their hands at the first sign of Lexa even just narrowing her eyes. There’s real fear there and every bit of it is earned. Clarke knows why Anya saved her. Why it took just one conversation from some woman dying in a field of corpses to know that this one, _this one_ would live. This one would survive.

But Clarke tugs her forward, and Lexa follows, her eyes wide and jumping all over her face, pupils blown. The metal has never felt so thick before this moment and Clarke pushes her face as far as she can through it. The only thing that matters is that when that Lexa does the same, she can _just_ feel her, the soft brush from Lexa’s lips.

There is no panting for air, nothing. Clarke’s breathing is a whole different story, but one thing that she was quick to notice about Lexa is that as good as she has become at hiding what she is, there’s one area she always trips up on.

And that’s when she’s scared. When she’s searching. Like a reflex, anytime there are humans in the room Lexa’s chest starts rising and falling and Clarke’s always found it a little bit funny, but—it makes sense, at least.

She dreads to think the sort of training Anya had put Lexa through to forge an instinct like that in her.

And she dreads even _worse_ to think how furious Anya must be to know that Lexa forgets every second of it the moment a girl asks her to kiss her.

Honestly.

“You’re beyond useless,” Clarke mumbles right into Lexa’s trembling mouth. It’s said through a knowing smile, though, and Lexa rightly glares at her for it.

“And _you_ are the devil in disguise.”

“Stop, you’ll make me blush.”

She watches the corners of Lexa’s mouth curl up into something both exasperated and fond, and when Clarke closes that tiny inch, the metal bars feeling twice as cold and oppressive as they usually do against her face, it slips right off in place for the kiss. The closest they can get to one, anyway.

It doesn’t feel the same as the other night. There’d always been this slight disconnect, that being lucid in a dream still didn’t stop it from _being_ a dream. This is different. This is _real._ Lexa seems to come to the exact same conclusion because it sparks something desperate between them. Clarke doesn’t even realise that she’s fisted the front of Lexa’s shirt and is trying to drag her closer in, not until Lexa’s own hand shoots up, squeezes Clarke’s wrist in a vice like grip.

Clarke breaks away only once she’s wrung every bit of oxygen from her lungs.

She lingers, though. Keeps their faces close as close as she can. Her lips feel swollen and her head’s spinning so bad it takes a moment, that she can blink back into reality, and look up at her.

Lexa’s eyes are already open. They’re glistening, too. Full of hope and hopeless all at once.

“Does that count as real?” Clarke says. Her voice comes out hoarse. There’s too much inside it she can’t say.

Lexa lets out this small, wet laugh, like there’s next to nothing she wouldn’t give to take away the metal between them. It’s a feeling Clarke knows intimately and so it really shouldn’t destroy her so much when Lexa pulls up the hand she still has a tight hold on, though it loosens now, and she brings it up to her face and kisses Clarke’s palm, before entwining their hands together.

“If we ever get out of here,” Lexa starts carefully.

“When,” Clarke says.

Lexa stares at her a moment, before kindly nodding. “ _When_ we get out of here, I want to take you somewhere.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Clarke can’t help it but grin a little, wiggling her eyebrows. “It’s your secret sex dungeon, isn’t it?”

Lexa just gives her a disbelieving look. Which is honestly a little disappointing, because she _really_ should’ve gotten used to this by now. “How come anytime I suggest something you immediately assume it’s a sex thing?”

“I’m a rascal,” Clarke shrugs.

“You’re something,” Lexa says, with a soft smile.

Clarke gets caught staring at the lone tear that spills over down Lexa’s cheek when she blinks. Wordlessly, she reaches up with her free hand and gently wipes it away with her thumb. “Emerson will kill me for this,” Clarke murmurs. Not even angry anymore, just resigned.

“He will fail.”

Lexa’s eyes have lost all their softness. It’s one of the few times that she can clearly, unabashedly see it: the Commander. The one who will save us all.

They don’t talk for a while. Neither pulls away, just sharing the silence together.

“Where will you take me?” Clarke whispers.

“Home,” Lexa whispers back.

-

The last time Emerson shoves the door open, she’s sleeping.

It turns out that it’s more the _waiting_ that wrecks you more than the actual moment. And now that they’ve got normal sleep again, Clarke’s been doing her best to catch up on all those lost nights, even if sometimes the dreams are worse than reality. They’re not even nightmares but the opposite.

Sometimes she just dreams of a quiet old house that sits too close to the trees. The kettle is squealing and the sun is glowing on all the dusty windows and then, if it’s a particularly bad one, there’s also a pair of arms slung around her waist, a chin slotted between the crook in her shoulder. Soft kisses up her neck.

Those types of dreams always leaving her shaking. She’ll wake up like she’s drowning and won’t speak for an hour, not until it feels like her mouth is hers again.

This time she’s dreaming of running. The world is a blur, none of it even feeling real. Her paws do, though. The ground does. The way it pushes up beneath her, the wind whipping through her fur as she outruns even the sun itself, light tripping and streaking behind her.

It feels like bliss. It feels like dying.

And then there’s a metal _bang_ and the entire world ruptures open.

She bursts awake to find Emerson stood outside her cage, grinding wide with the shock baton out his hands. He’s almost shaking with excitement, eyes shining like they never have and Clarke already knows what this is, even without having to glance to the pack of guard dogs standing behind him, shifting nervous on their feet, weapons ready.

All she does is sigh and lie back down in her bed.

“Got something for me, I’m guessing?” Clarke says.

Emerson won’t stop grinning. “Time for you to pay up, dog.”

“The hell you talking about?”

“Cage is bored with you,” Emerson says, the baton lighting with electricity as he comes forward, thumbs through his ring of keys. “Which means that he’s finally _listened_.”

Clarke just huffs a laugh, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. “You’re fucked in the head, Emy.”

He doesn’t even blink. Her heart kicks up in her chest and Clarke slowly sits up from her bed, eyes glued to where Emerson is picking out the right key, and actually _unlocking_ the cage without sticking a tranq in her first. He’s almost beaming with excitement, but even as Clarke shoots up to her feet the second she hears the click of the lock, Emerson pauses just before he can swing the cage door open.

He raises the baton in his hand, the smell of electricity like a singe to the air.

“You will put these on, dog, and you’re gonna be good about it.”

He jerks his head to the side, an obvious signal to a guard close by that rushes forward at the first sign of it. They linger behind him, clearly not wanting to get anywhere near her, but tentatively, they reach out, hold up a pair of cuffs. It’s too bright and clean to be steel.

“What?” Clarke says dryly. “Did you finally use up your tranq stock?”

Emerson shakes his head, that plastered wide grin never wavering. “No. I just want to see your face. I’ll never see you again after this, dog. Call it sentimental.”

Clarke narrows her eyes. Emerson steps away, but he kicks the cage door open. And instead of the usual rush that she goes for, _this_ time she edges back, blood rushing all in her head and her whole body feeling like static. Because she knows what this is. She fucking knows.

Emerson must too, because all he does is glance over to Lexa, then back to her. “Tell me, dog,” he says, quieter now. “You ever killed a vampire before?” Clarke backs up even further, her breathing speeding up. His stare doesn’t shift off her. “Have you ever killed a friend? Have your ever killed someone you _loved_?”

Clarke lunges forward.

She gets him this time. His eyes widen at the unexpected flash of movement and he’s not fast enough, but she only has him down on the ground a second, snarling like the monster he always tells her she is and about to rip into him, claws pushing out from her hands when something _hot_ and electric stabs into her side and everything goes white.

Strong arms hook around her neck, drag her back up. Her teeth are still buzzing from the violent shock to her system, but that does nothing to stop her from trying to break out anyway, throwing all her weight back. The guard pinning her stumbles backwards with it and knocks into the cage. He spits out for his comrades to grab her from the front, and Clarke just kicks her leg at the closest one foolish enough to try that, sends them tumbling back.

The arm digging into her throat tightens. Her hands are barely _hands_ anymore, though, and she bites down into the nearest bit of flesh, blood filling up her mouth and the guard shouting right into her ear. The choking grip loosens, except without a drip of warning the guard gets yanked back from her and Clarke practically stumbles forward from it, leftover momentum still dragging her.

She spins around only to see Lexa has snagged the guard. He’d gotten close enough for her range, and already he’s screaming and trying to throw off the arm locked around his neck. Where her fangs are sunk deep into his throat. Barely a heartbeat later she just has to rear her head back, shove the guard to the ground. He doesn’t get up.

Someone kicks the backs of her legs out. She tries to twist away from it, even as she’s curled over on the floor, but the baton slams into her back and the electricity rips through her again. Vaguely, she hears shouting, from a voice that sounds suspiciously like Lexa’s. But that doesn’t make sense.

In the moments it takes for the world to come back to her, phantom shakes still reverberating through her bones, there’s a _new_ burning that’s searing around her wrists. She’s not even that surprised to see the silver cuffs there. What else could she expect? Some kindness, some dignity? Some hope?

“It’s over, dog,” Emerson breathes into her ear, snatching her arm and forcing her up, the tip of a gun digging her into her back. She can’t tell if it’s a tranq or full of bullets. Maybe it doesn’t matter. It’ll end the same. “It’s over. You’re gonna die, dog. You’re gonna die. Either you’ll live this, or you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Clarke just stares out at Lexa. Emerson keeps dragging her back, but Clarke never stops looking at her, watching as the rest of the guards circle in closer, crossbows raised, shouting to each other, to _her_. Lexa snarls right at them, blood still dripping off her chin.

“What?” Emerson snaps, seething. “No quip? No sarcastic fucking remark?”

The guards throw another set of cuffs into Lexa’s cage.

She doesn’t even glance at them, bares her teeth instead. Waits for the door to open. For the bloodbath to start.

“Could never go down quietly, could you?” Clarke whispers, just for herself. And she laughs with it, wet and dying.

If you still can call it a laugh. 

-

The crowd’s already screaming as they drag her through. It’s the first time that she’s ever been _awake_ the whole way, too, gritting her teeth at the silver burn around her wrists. She tries to break out every once in a while, not that she expects to _succeed_ or anything, as the couple loops restraining her neck and Emerson never hesitating to raise his fist if she gets too far says otherwise.

Clarke keeps at it, anyway. Setting her feet, trying to lash out with tied up hands. If only because it keeps the guards on edge and annoys the _fuck_ out of Emerson. Which is a pretty inarguable reason for Clarke.

Still, the entire journey, she does her best to remember every turn, every door, burning it into every inch of her memory. It probably won’t even matter in the end, will make barely a difference. If this works Clarke knows exactly what she will do and it has _nothing_ to do with some schematics to a prison. Vampires might have the hearing, might be able to pick out a heartbeat miles underground, but werewolves are worse. Because of their nose.

Because a werewolf could track someone over an entire _country_ if they had to. Would follow your every step, all the times you’d sat down, stepped out from your car to take a stretch, and they would chase you not for food, or survival, but because of a broken heart. Because they remember. 

It’s no wonder hunters have dedicated their lives into wiping them out.

Clarke looks up and sees the light from the arena. Around them, the crowds cheering bounces off all the rock walls, echoes in the tight space till it’s thrumming inside her chest. She’s never heard them so loud before, not for any of her fights. And not even for _Lexa’s_.

Turns out Lexa was right. The predicted bloodshed between them will draw _everyone_ out.

It’s good a thing, even if it feels nothing like it.

Just to for the sake of it, Clarke jerks herself forward, forcing the guards all around her to yell and snap the poles back. One of them loses their footing altogether, hadn’t set his feet in time for the unexpected movement. The pole goes flying from his hands and Clarke wakes up in an entirely different way then, eyes cutting over to the _other_ guard still holding on to his grip, face paling at seeing the yellow that clouds into her iris, the new resolve overtaking her.

Unsurprisingly, Emerson is the one who puts a stop to it.

All he does is come up from behind and grabs where the cuffs are around her wrist, and then _pushes_ them into her skin, as much as he can. It sears into the flesh and smoke hisses out from underneath it. Clarke goes blind the face of the agony, forgetting everything and just thrashing wildly, trying to twist away from what feels like it’s _everywhere_.

“Are you fucking done playing games, dog?” Emerson snaps, doesn’t wait for an answer and only shoves her back, releasing the hold on her wrists.

Clarke falls to her knees, panting like crazy and biting off the scream that wants to break out. Her hands tremble violently and when she tentatively opens her eyes again, clenching her jaw and breathing fast through her nose, she glances down to see smoke still seeping from below the silver. It smells horrible.

Slowly, her gaze drifts up to meet Emerson’s. 

“No,” Clarke says, clearly. Firmly. Even if the word still shakes with pain.

Emerson just shakes his head in disgust.

All of them look ahead once they hear Cage’s voice. He’s talking the crowd up, readying them for the first entrance. With a sharp hand signal by Emerson, multiple guards grab around her arms, drag her back up. Clarke forgets to resist, too distracted with the panicked spike of her heartrate.

This is it. This is _it_.

This is where she has to kill Lexa.

Idly, she wonders which of them has it worse.

“You know, I’ve seen that woman lay waste to an entire room of guards, once.” Clarke only begrudgingly glances over to Emerson at his musings. He’s not looking at her, though. But to the arena. To the cage door on the other side. “I wanted her dead long before this—she _should_ have been—but Cage, no, _Cage_ believed she was the answer to all of our fucking problems. That she was the lifeblood to this place. The reason any of us are still here.”

“But she’s not. She never was. You think these people care for _her_?” He throws a hand out to the barely visible crowd, washed out by the harsh lights. “They don’t fucking care. If she dies today, we’ll just find another. Cage might believe there’s something special about her, about _you_ , but if he ever came down here for more than the fights—he’d know. He’d know exactly what you are.”

He looks to her, waits for her to say it. Ask what he means.

Clarke merely stares back at him.

He sighs through his nose and grinds his teeth like always. “Animals, dog. That’s what you are. That’s what you become when you’re down here long enough. You die today and we’ll find another and those idiots will keep shovelling out money for us. You’ll never win. You’ll never escape this.”

“Neither will you,” Clarke mutters, staring him dead in the eye.

And for the one and only time, the corner of Emerson’s mouth twitches up, and it’s real.

They only break the stare when Cage finally yells out her name. Not her _actual_ name, but the nickname they’d given her after she kept winning, kept scraping through the fights by the skin of her teeth. Wanheda. She doesn’t know what it means, but she doubts the crowd does, either. Cage probably just likes the sound of it, had heard something similar from Lexa, from any of the vampires that end up down here.

She’d asked Lexa once, what it translated as.

“Commander of Death,” Lexa said, eyes closed like they always were. Lost inside herself.

It had made Clarke smile. No one commanded death. Death didn’t trust anyone but himself. “So what are _you_ the commander of?”

“What is all that matters to us?”

Clarke thought it over before a disbelieved laugh bubbled out of her. “No way. What? You’re the Commander of _Blood_?”

Lexa didn’t stop meditating, but the edge of her mouth was running up her face in a dead giveaway.

The gate cranks open. Across the sand, already she can see her stood behind the bars on the opposite end, chains wrapped the entire way up her arms, blood sprayed over her mouth, her hands. Lexa must’ve raised hell. Not that that’s really surprising. They needed this to look real, to build expectations— _attention_.

Keep all eyes on them. Keep them hooked.

“Hold her,” Emerson orders, and Clarke snaps her head around, not expecting it when three separate guards get a grip on her. Two on her arms and one even hooking an elbow around her neck. She’s confused for only a second, frowning at the overkill before noticing that Emerson is reaching deep into his pocket, is pulling something out. The case is small but from it he removes what looks like a miniature gun, almost.

But there’s a tube. And some red liquid that’s sloshing inside, that sways within the glass. Her blood turns to ice at realising that she recognises what it is from her mother’s hospital days as a kid. A jet injector. He must see the recognition in her eyes, because Emerson grins, strolling forward while Clarke pushes back, the guards holding onto her doubling down.

“What are you doing?” Clarke snaps, her breathing speeding up as Emerson closes in.

Emerson keeps grinning. He shrugs and reaches out for one of her arms, still cuffed at the wrist. It makes it impossible to rip it away. “I’m not a fool,” Emerson murmurs. He doesn’t look at her as he lines the injector up into her forearm. “You won’t kill her. Not without an incentive. And even then… well. Always so _honourable,_ aren’t you, dog? You’d never sleep again.”

Clarke struggles desperately but it’s not enough. He squeezes the trigger and a burst of pain shoots out from the injection site, the red liquid inside just shrinking and shrinking. “What the fuck is that? What did you do? What—”

“A failsafe,” Emerson interrupts, cutting into her panicked ramblings. He chucks the injector off to the floor, finished with its use. “Because you won’t kill _her_ , dog. But if you were to think she was someone else, if _she_ thought you were someone else…”

Clarke stares at him, the lights behind his head fanning out like a halo, like some soft glow over the whole world. Vertigo builds up in her head and when he smirks his mouth seems to stretch across the entire width of his face.

“No need to look so scared. There’s an antidote.” His voice sounds like they’re in a cathedral. Echoes and echoes and echoes. “There’s _one_ antidote. Better hope you find it first, though. The Commander’s not really known for showing _mercy_ to her enemies.”

“ _No,_ ” Clarke snarls, because this wasn’t part of the fucking plan, but she thrashes and struggles in the guards’ hold only for a pair of strong hands to grasp her shoulder, force her to _stop_ and look at them.

She freezes completely at seeing her father in front of her.

“You’re okay, kiddo,” Jake smiles, his voice warm and deep and everything that keeps her up at night. She can’t even speak. But he _chuckles_ at this, that one he always used to do, like this is just what he expected. “You’re scared. Of course you are. But that’s not what matters, is it?”

“ _You_ are what matters,” Jake continues. He’s not looking at her, focused on reaching for her hands and undoing the silver cuffs. The relief feels like nothing compared to how her eyes are overflowing with tears. “What do we always say, sweetheart?”

“If the world won’t look after you than we must look after each other.”

Jake smiles wide, looking so proud that it makes it feel like her chest is caving in on itself. “Good girl. Our people are all we’ve got left. That’s what you fight for. What you _live_ for.”

She opens her mouth, wanting to say something— _anything_ —but then she blinks and like water he’s gone, Emerson’s face taking up where Jake’s used to be. Her brow creases and she’s still sniffling, but Emerson doesn’t look the least bit surprised.

He only gives her a mocking grin. “That’s a sweet sentiment, dog.”

She would kill him for the crime of knowing anything that came from Jake’s mouth, except he must have walked her back while she was distracted with her father. Or the hallucination of him, at least. But it takes only one yell from Emerson and the metal gate slams between them before she can make a move.

Her eyes snap to the side. She spots the guard that was responsible, the crank they’d twisted back with their hands before letting the wheel spin freely, let gravity do the rest. They’re behind the bars, just separate of the crowd. Out of reach. Cage shouts again, ramping up the reveal higher and higher until the sheer chaos of sound from the crowd is like ocean around them and makes her feel like she’s drowning.

And then he’s bellowing Lexa’s title, and Clarke spins around to see Lexa being pushed into the opposite end of arena too. Already, the edges of Clarke’s vision are fuzzing out; the sand looking more like hardwood flooring; the crowd washing away into an endless hall; walls that are old and loved and never really settling on one colour like a kaleidoscope.

Lexa stands there in the mist of all this. But she’s swaying how no vampire does, blinking too fast. Like she’s trying to make sense of everything when nothing is making sense.

The drug is in her too.

-

When they meet eyes, they both seem to reach the same idea simultaneously.

Clarke breaks into a sprint first, and Lexa does it a second later, and the moment they get near enough Lexa doesn’t give resistance when Clarke grabs the front of her shirt, pushes her into the wall that she only belatedly realises isn’t supposed to be a wall. It’s because this brings their faces close. Close enough no one else will hear.

Then again, with the way the crowd is screaming like the world’s ending; they could probably scream out too and it’ll be as if neither of them even spoke.

“This is bad,” Lexa says, astoundingly calm.

Clarke just gives her an incredulous look, one arm pushing up horizontally against Lexa’s neck. Not with any pressure, though. Just the idea of it. “Oh, you _think_?” she snaps back, but Lexa doesn’t seem to even hear it, as her eyes blow wide without warning. Real fear flashes in them, makes her arms shoot up so fast Clarke can’t stop the harsh shove that sends her stumbling back.

In the seconds it takes for Clarke to recover, she looks up with bared teeth only to see Emerson’s face where Lexa’s was.

Oh, shit.

Lexa forcibly shakes her head like that can clear whoever Clarke looks like. But they’ve still got roles to play, so Lexa comes forward anyway, even Clarke though knows the action had made no sort of difference. She rushes for her and Clarke fends her off as she’s supposed to, with Lexa deliberately pulling back on her hits like they talked about.

But halfway through a punch gets thrown harder than any other’s, forces her back through the open door of the hallway and instead into one of the rooms. Clarke catches herself on foot of the bedframe. Something flashes at the edge of her vision and she twists away instinctively, just missing the follow-up blow from Emerson. Without thinking, she scans the environment in a search for a weapon. Her eyes catch on the vase on the side table next to the bed. The bed where she and Lexa had…

She snatches it and smashes the thing into Emerson’s head. But while it shatters into pieces he doesn’t even react, like it wasn’t even real, didn’t even _happen_. In those seconds she wastes for confusion he gets a hold on her shoulders and throws her around, lines her up for a kick aimed right at her chest. It sends her straight into the door, all oxygen expelled from her lungs. 

The door breaks right off its hinges and slams into the ground, her on top of it, groaning, clutching at her ribs.

But then she feels wind. Cold air. The smell of earth. Pine trees, soil.

Her head snaps up, and she _reels_ at seeing she’s outside. Below, the door lays out over grass, all that surrounds her woods and dirt, and above is the night sky that looks about a million times more important than usual because it’s been _so long_. Even the full moon is there, shining like nothing else.

Clarke hears him before she sees.

Emerson makes a go for her while she’s vulnerable, lying prone. But she flips over onto her back when his hands surge out for her and instead she grabs _him_ , uses his gravity against him. Because he’s leaning downwards, which means when her legs kick up against his belly all while throwing her own weight back, her hands scrabbling for a hold at his front and _pulling_ —he goes him flying over her, slamming into the dirt ground back first.

Clarke rushes him this time. They wrestle each other in the dirt while snarling the whole way. He’s so much stronger than he should be, though, has a stamina and a reaction time that makes no sense. The confusion makes her frown to herself even with the weight of him above her, his knee dug deep into her throat.

“This is how you die, dog,” Emerson seethes.

She grabs his knee choking her blind, pushes and pushes and pushes.

Nothing.

“Never,” Clarke gasps.

One hand still stays resisting the crushing pressure on her windpipe, saves her enough so that her other can shoot out and fist a handful of dirt, throw it directly into his smirking face. Distantly, the weird softness of the dirt flashes that same confusion in her—because she’s a _werewolf_ , and she’s had a whole of experience on what dirt should feel like—but far more important is that from the distraction Emerson’s face twists up, throwing his head to the side to shake off what dirt had scratched his eyes.

 _This_ time when she shoves him he falls off her.

Clarke rolls over immediately, pushing up to elbows so she can cough the pain in her throat away, gasp in air. She barley gives herself a moment to recover, scrambling up to her feet, about to spin around only to freeze at seeing the person who’s all of a sudden right in front of her. The person who one glimpse of has her top lip snarling up instinctively.

Finn sees it and backs away, his hands up in peace like this is something he can still talk his way out of. “This isn’t you,” he begs as if he ever had any fucking clue who she is.

It’s only then that she realises she knows this forest. She knows this clearing, this woods around them; the one that ever since that night she’d never stepped foot in since, couldn’t even take the memory of it. This is where he’d lured her. For Diana. For cash as a trade-off for love.

Like the thought on its own had summoned werewolf herself, a snarl sounds off behind her. Clarke spins, Diana already making a run for her with her teeth flashing, the light blond fur almost looking silver in the moonlight. Pain ripples through her arm when the teeth clamp down into flesh. She shouts, has to throw the rabid wolf off with a punch that’s more like a slash. From the claws that are pushing up through her middle knuckles, already _there_.

Clarke hastily backs up to recover, except a quick glance down to the bite into her arm reveals it’s not even the right shape for it. It’s too small, too round. Like a human’s. Spare for the hole for the incisors, which are far deeper than the rest.

Diana is growling, stalking towards her with hackles raised. And because it’s the natural thing to do, those claws grow even _further_ , her human fingers curling in as the bone pulls in with it only to push out again for an entirely different shape. Fire licks at her insides and Clarke keeps moving backwards even if the shift gets worse in her. The world bends into a distinct colour spectrum of blue and yellow, but when the pain is about to set in fully, to seize up her spine and break open the bones in her face, force it into a snout—Diana flashes forward and behind her, flowing up to two legs in a move that should be impossible.

Arms harshly hook under hers and rip her back. It pulls the shoulder joint badly in some unnatural way, but more importantly it forces her to hold off shifting, otherwise she risks the chance of tearing her arms from their sockets. Because canine shoulders can’t hold their limbs out flat sideways.

It’s a smart move. Which Diana should be absolutely incapable of.

The wolf is only half of her, though.

There’s something unsettlingly familiar in how she throws herself back, trying to break free of the arms locked around her, how the way she struggles and snarls and flings her weight forward—it just feels so much like deja vu, like she’s done this exact thing before.

A particular dirty backwards kick into Diana’s knees—one that’s vicious enough Diana yells into her ear, the bone breaking under the force—almost makes her think she’s done it, is about to rip herself free when her captor seems to give up being human entirely and actually _bites_ into her neck.

Clarke is kinda expecting to die. Because it doesn’t matter what you are, everybody is weak at the throat.

Except almost immediately after the flash of pain, the force holding her is just gone. In less than a blink Diana has shoved her away from her hands, though when Clarke stumbles and spins around the woman’s face is already melting, becoming wider, more masculine, black stubble climbing up along their chin.

Where blood is leaking down. And the man, the _hunter_ from years ago, his eyes are completely round, and he reaches up to touch the blood on his lips, staring down at it in shock, then jerking up to Clarke, blinking, pure fear and horror written all over his face.

Clarke frowns, still panting from the struggle before. But the hunter doesn’t make any move for her. He even backs _away_ , and then like he’s realised something his eyes lurch up to above him. Like he’s looking for something. Like he’s searching. Whatever it is he must find, too, because the frantic snap back and forth of his gaze freezes on something high over her head. He steps forward, never looking away from it, like he’s about to make a jump for the thing.

She doesn’t let him.

He’s not looking at her when she spearheads him. But even though he’s human, his reflexes are nothing like it. It’s a moment too late, so it only half works, but his body still twists enough that Clarke loses her grip on him for the way down and they _both_ go tumbling.

She gets a mouthful of dirt for it. When she spits it out, though, getting it off her tongue she slows at the soft, grainy feel of it. Worse, when her eyes open again and she stares down in a loss at her hands, now they’re all dusted in _sand_. Not dirt. She can hear it, too. The slow crash of waves, the sway of water. 

Out in front of her is the ocean, one she’s only seen in movies. The sun blazes down above and glints off the sea sharp enough she’s almost tempted to shield her eyes. Clarke jumps up to stand, and it’s pure instinct and nothing else, something that’s buried deep, deep inside her that has her backpedalling without realising, wanting to get as far as she fucking can from where the blue keeps trying to reach her feet.

The hunter comes at her from behind. Whatever had made him hesitate before seems long forgotten now. They trade hits that the hunter reacts too fast for and shakes off the damage that should have left him curled over in the sand. She even gets a particularly nasty one in his stomach, where claws still push up from hands so it doesn’t knock the wind from in it but _stabs_ him in some way, and she twists her wrist, makes him feel it.

He repays her in kind by ripping the muscle in shoulder open with his teeth. You get what you give.

They take each other into the ground again. But the slam isn’t to a soft sand bed anymore, but hard and wet. Realisation sweeps through her a heartbeat after and already, _already_ Clarke is panicking, because the only way the sand could be wet would be if they’re right where water is, where the sea is washing up.

The first wave brushes the top of head, like a kiss almost. Above her she’s holding the hunter’s wrist with hands, squeezing even tighter when he tries to rip free from them. But the second wave is even bigger and slams up over her entire face, leaves her sputtering and reeling and hyperventilating.

The opportunity isn’t wasted, either. He gets his hands free and snatches the front of the drenched shirt, rips her up back to two feet. Clarke is still in a middle of an oncoming panic attack when the hunter does the absolute worst thing possible. 

He gets a solid grip on her, and then _pulls_ , throwing her over his back with the professional precision you need training for.

Right into the water.

It doesn’t make sense, but somehow they’re the furthest thing from the shallows and Clarke plunges through right down to the bottom of the ocean it feels like. Violent noise all that she can hear; complete deep-ocean blackness all she can see; the sanctuary light of the noonday sun getting further and further above her.

And then she’s slamming violently into the seabed.

Pain explodes out from the rear of her head. It consumes everything, enough so that when Clarke groans and blindly rolls for her feet, just stumbling like a drunk back up—though the world sways around in double, it’s also the _right_ world. It’s the arena. Her clothes are dry, the crowd is back to screaming around her, and she steps back at seeing _Lexa_ , finally. Her Lexa.

Fuck.

Clarke holds up her hand, staggering still as she edges away from where Lexa is clearly still under the drug’s influence and seeing whatever it is she hates most. God knows how many enemies a _vampire_ must have. Maybe Clarke’s face never stays one for longer than a second, just flashing through like a flipbook.

A frantic scan of their surroundings shows exactly what she fears.

Before, there’d been even more guards than usual in a ring behind the metal, lined up ready and eager. Some have peeled off now, though, gaps left in where before it’d been a tight formation. And more, she shoots a glance behind her and doesn’t see Emerson anywhere. There’s only one reason Emerson would ever even _consider_ leaving when he had a real chance to watch her die.

They’ve probably got only a few minutes before the alarms go off, before the place gets turned over.

That’s not even counting that the drug will kick in again soon. When the shock to her head wears off.

“I’m sorry in advance for this,” Clarke says to Lexa, already wincing at what she’s about to do. Lexa doesn’t hear, or maybe she just _can’t_ hear full stop, hears something entirely different from her mouth. Whatever it is seems real bad too, because Lexa’s face twists into a snarl and she lunges for her supernaturally fast.

Clarke waits for that millisecond where Lexa gets in range. The moment she does, Clarke moves with it, except she fists the front of Lexa’s shirt and spins her around only to let go, let momentum take care of the rest. It works, violently. Lexa shouts in pain, the back of her head taking the brunt of the force, but when she clutches at it from behind and rears her neck back up to look at her, she stops. Blinks. Realises.

“Shit,” Lexa breathes.

It’s only the second time she’s ever heard Lexa really swear. The first being their night together, when Clarke’s mouth was between Lexa’s thighs and Lexa was fisting the sheets.

Not that this is _at all_ the time to be thinking about that.

Clarke opens her mouth, but Lexa cuts her off before she can even start. “The antidote is hanging up top, I saw it before. Get it, _now_ , and cure yourself.”

“You take it,” Clarke says immediately.

Lexa doesn’t bother arguing, just pushes her back with a snarl. “ _Now_ , Clarke!”

Clarke curses to herself but listens. Lexa’s face crashes in with relief, and she points up so far high that Clarke spins around for it, follows where she wants. Already, the metal bars seem like they’re dripping, but the only thing Clarke does is ignore it and sprints. She can see it, the antidote case hanging down from above like fish bait. One hard push off from the ground and she swipes it mid-air, tears it from the string. It takes a few tries because of the shakes in her fingers before she can flip open the case.

As promised, inside is a syringe. The liquid is blue this time. Hopefully this means it isn’t just more of the drug. Or worse, it’s some other hell concoction entirely, because she _really_ wouldn’t put it past Emerson to be lying completely about this being the supposed antidote.

It’s this or death.

Like she’s seen her mother do, she holds it facing upwards, and nudges the plunger only slightly to get rid of any compressed air, hurriedly taps the side just in case. And then she’s twisting her arm face-up and lining it up for a vein and closing her eyes right after. Praying for the mercy of the werewolf gods. If there even are any. There are so many better things to be gods for.

She stabs it into the vein, squeezes.

-

Good news.

It doesn’t kill her.

The effect takes a moment to kick in, though Clarke still suspects there’s something supernatural in it to speed the process along. _Probably_ was something in the original drug, too, so it worked no matter what the creature was. What sort of metabolism they had. It sweeps through her and Clarke only now realises that she’s been sweating this entire time. Her skin feels like there’s lava seething beneath it and her heart’s running way too fast in her chest, her throat too dry.

But she opens her eyes, and the arena looks like the arena. Everything sounds normal again. _Looks_ normal.

It worked.

Clarke scrambles back up to her feet. Sand sprays sideways beneath her heels but she only rushes over to Lexa, who already is blinking too fast, eyesight tripping all over the place and struggling to stay on Clarke. The drug has clearly kicked in again.

“Do it,” Lexa spits anyway, when Clarke is close enough to her. Like for balance, her hand shoots out and grabs the collar of Clarke’s shirt, steadies herself. “We’re out of time.”

Clarke hesitates, still desperately wanting no part of this. But there’s no choice. They have to keep the eyes on them and they _have_ to get the gates open. This is what they planned, what she has to do. She refuses to draw it out, though. To make Lexa suffer. So she straightens up, the resolve firming in her, and then leans forward, pulls Lexa in by the neck.

Lexa freezes up at the unexpected kiss, but then she’s giving in a second later.

Eyes still closed, Clarke reaches her free hand up between them, flattens it over Lexa’s chest. Exactly where her heart is.

Clarke is the one who breaks it first. Their faces stay close, but she leans back just enough to talk. “You’ll remember me, won’t you?”

“You speak as if there is choice,” Lexa answers, equally shaky.

Clarke grits her teeth so tight it aches. And before she can back herself out of this the hand over Lexa’s heart rises to fingertips, and then _pushes_.

The wet crunch sound it makes is nightmarish. She rips it back as fast as she can, trying to preserve the pain to a minimum, but Lexa cries out in agony anyway. Clarke gets shoved away, but the crowd all seem to hush at once, just staring and staring at where Lexa sways on her feet. The vampire paws at the hole in the chest, looking up at her with wide-eyes, and then collapses.

The death horn booms in the tight space.

Deafening cheers and hollers break out immediately. It’s a sheer wall of sound that’s impossible to hear anything over. So impossible that no one hears him when the _real_ Emerson comes sprinting up to the other side of the cage gate, blood dotted all over his face and his uniform and screaming frantically to close it, _close it_.

The gate continues cranking open.

“You better run,” Clarke snarls at him, each inch the gate pulls upwards making her heart beat faster. “You better fucking _run_ , Emy!”

Emerson steps back in horror, and then bolts.

A coward to the end.

Some wall of rock collapses and explodes somewhere outside the ring. The crowd’s cheering falters, confused, but then the guards are yelling out in fear and snapping up their guns as this black dog made of oil and smoke and burning with red eyes bursts in through the gap in the wall, rips out the throat of the nearest gambler. There’s a beat of stunned, horrified silence, and then the whole place lights up in screams when the rest of the prisoners stream in, another wall even blowing out from the other end. Let the reckoning begin.

Clarke ignores it all. In the space of breath, she’s already flashed over to where Lexa is curled over sideways on the ground, clutching uselessly at the hole inside her. She’s so caught up in it Lexa doesn’t even react when Clarke rolls her over onto her back, still holding the bleeding heart in her hands. And then just pushes it back in.

It’s what Lexa had told her to do, long before this. The body already knows how to heal itself. Mere seconds after, Lexa’s eyes are snapping open and the torn flesh is regenerating itself, crawling all back together until the hole is gone entirely. Clarke doesn’t wait for it to finish before she’s hooking her arms under Lexa’s armpits and hurriedly dragging her back towards the open gate.

They make it. The sand floor switches to stone and Clarke gently eases her down the moment they’re in, kneeling beside her. She pulls her head into her lap, holding her face, making sure she’s alive, she’s _here_. Relief consumes her at finding she is, but Lexa’s pupils are still far too wide and unable to track anything concrete. The skin that should feel cool and smooth is too hot, slick with sweat.

She’s still drugged.

“What do I do?” Clarke asks Lexa, asks herself, asks god, just fucking _anyone_. She curses and looks around desperately but there’s nothing. To the left is the corridor back to the cells, and to the right the arena is being brought down to its knees. There’s so much screaming. Some of it doesn’t even sound human. Lexa keeps groaning beneath her, but Clarke’s panicked searching freezes, catches on the blood drying down the sides of Lexa’s mouth. From where it’d spilled over from the heart being torn out.

Blood.

“Hey, Lexa. _Lexa_. How do you digest blood? Because it can’t go to your heart, can it? Because it doesn’t pump. But it can’t pass to your stomach either, ‘cuz it doesn’t matter, does it? Is it direct? Like whatever blood _you_ feed just, becomes your own?”

“Fuck you, Anya,” Lexa slurs, wildly swinging at her.

Clarke catches her fist before it can make contact, holds her still. “World of help, babe. _World_ of fucking help.”

She looks down at her and realises there’s just no way Lexa can help. They’re gonna have to wing it. But it _should_ work, right? Because if vampires digest blood directly, then that means that if Lexa feeds on her, she won’t just consume her blood—she’ll consume the cure _inside_ her blood too. It’ll be like Lexa got a dose of the antidote.

“Goddammit,” Clarke sighs, but already she’s releasing her hold on Lexa’s hands so she can pull her _own_ wrist up to her mouth, her teeth aching sharply from the shift.

She bites into her wrist. Then she holds it out above Lexa’s mouth, watches how even after just the few drops touch her lips the green in Lexa’s iris melts into that dark red, fangs elongating instinctually.

“Don’t kill me,” Clarke asks politely, settles her hand under Lexa’s head, and pulls her up to her neck.

It’s immediate.

Lexa groans, and Clarke sighs with her head tilted back. Her eyes fall shut on their own, but she _feels_ it when Lexa’s hand jumps up between them and cups the opposite side she’s drinking from, holding onto her there like an anchor. And just when the dizziness is building up too high and Clarke’s about to push her away, Lexa does it for her. Pulls _back_ from her.

Clarke sways her eyes open and stares down at where she’s lying beneath her. Lexa blinks rapidly at her, her brow furrowing, losing the haze in her eyes, and maybe, once this is all over and they’re far, far away, Clarke will look back on this moment and it will feel right and good and worthy. That even with all this blood on their teeth and their hands soaked in war, even just the comfort of Lexa in her arms cancels it all out. That so long as they have each other damnation doesn’t mean anything, won’t ever get its hooks in.

Maybe.

“Hey,” Lexa breathes, coherent but exhausted.

Clarke makes a sound that’s somehow both a laugh and a sob combined. “Hey, stranger.”

Tears burn and overwhelm the backs of her eyes. Clarke doesn’t even think before yanking Lexa back up into her arms so she can _hold_ her close, can feel her pressed against her entire front. Lexa hugs her back with the same amount of desperation. She doesn’t say anything, just holds her deathly tight and breathes her in and in.

A monstrous snarl from the arena shakes them out of it. A whole new wave of screams surge up, gunfire following with it.

They ease back from each other, both watching through the open gate.

“I have to find Cage,” Lexa says at last.

“I know,” Clarke whispers. Her fingers ball the back of Lexa’s shirt up. “I need to find Emerson.” Finally, she looks down to Lexa. “Are you alright to go after him, though?”

“Are you?” Lexa counters.

Neither of them answers.

But they both get up.

-

It doesn’t take too long to find him.

This place is like a maze and it’s so much damn _bigger_ than she’d thought it was, but the one thing werewolves can’t ever be faulted for is their nose. And the deeper the hate goes, the more cemented that scent is. That _memory_ is. Clarke ignores all the chaos erupting around her and just follows that line of scent cutting the air.

She turns a corner and only shoots a passing glance to the guard being mauled by some snake creature on top of him. The thing is massive, its body thick and scaled and stretching down a solid ten metres, and its neck flares out like a cobra’s, human-shaped arms sticking out the sides of it. They seem to be pinning the guard down while he thrashes beneath it, holds him still so it can get into his throat.

It snaps up when she gets close enough. Hisses at her, blood and gore dripping down its fangs.

Clarke tenses, briefly slowing and preparing for some sort of attack—but the snake’s tongue flicks out, tasting the air, and apparently it’s got a sense of smell like hers, because it seems to realise what is. The moment it does, the snake is ignoring her again and focuses back down on the guard.

The guard is trying to crawl away below it, clutching his neck.

She keeps walking and doesn’t look down.

Emerson it turns out has a couple brain cells in him. Not a _lot_ , but enough that she finds him not out in the halls or fighting back with his men, but holed up in some room. He’d clearly tried running only to get tracked down, anyway. There’s blood spread all over the door handle, even a streak of it that’s almost like a handprint over the metal sign reading _Security_ nailed into the door. Someone is cursing and grunting inside, like they’re fighting someone off.

Clarke is shouldering open the door before she even realises.

The room is a mess. There’s a whole wall of CCTV screens, except half of them are cracked and fizzing and the chair is instead not on the floor, but crashed out on the table, one leg even stabbed through a screen. Emerson wrestles with someone on the ground. Another prisoner is haltingly bringing herself up to her feet off the side, clutching at the back of her head where it must’ve been smashed into the wall.

Clarke rushes forward and snatches the back of the one that’s on top of Emerson, rips him off. They both look human, but when she twists him around and throws him back so she’s standing between them and Emerson—the male looking one has teeth that are like rows of knives and the other snarls at her with eyes that are like black holes. No iris, no nothing.

She snarls right back. Her hands flash with pain from the claws pushing out and her insides are already burning, the world shifting out into different colours, but the two attackers hesitate at seeing she’s one of them.

“Go to the arena,” Clarke orders, her words coming out more a growl than human speech. “You’ll find better revenge there.”

They both glance to each other.

Clarke exhales through her nose. “He’s just one.”

“It’s _Emerson_ ,” the one with knife-teeth says.

He says Emerson’s name the same way Clarke does.

“I know,” Clarke says lowly, and knife-teeth blinks, hearing those two months of hell in her voice. His eyes jump between her and Emerson still on the floor behind her. And then he steps back, nodding in understanding and grabbing the other one’s wrist. She resists briefly, but then he leans and whispers something harshly in her ear. She stops, looks at her with that same realisation knife-teeth had come to, and then they’ve both cautiously slinking out the room and her and Emerson are alone.

Clarke follows after so she can close the door behind them, locks it.

She’d heard what he said to her.

_It’s the werewolf._

Clarke turns around and stares down at Emerson.

He’s still on the floor but has propped himself against the wall. Blood is slipping through his flingers, where he’s cradling his stomach. His face twisted in pain, voice shaking with it. 

Clarke watches where his eyes keep jumping, though. His gun is kicked off to the side.

Too far to reach.

To be safe, she picks it up as she approaches, making sure the safety is off before shoving it under her waistband behind her back. The relief on his face freezes when she only calms stalks forward and he can’t even raise a hand in time to stop the fist that smashes into his face. He slams into floor. Emerson spits out blood, glances up again and only gets about halfway through opening his mouth before the next hit comes, even heavier.

Clarke stands immovable above him, breathing hard and fast through her nose, teeth gritted tight.

He laughs this time, bloody and wet. When he looks up, still on his side and leaning all his weight on his elbow, one hand holds his stomach while the other comes up, touches the bleeding scratch marks now carved into his cheek. His eyes drift up to her and then low, settling on her clenched fists. On the blood there, caught on the knuckles. On the claws.

“You’re going to kill me,” Emerson says, looking up at her with that same damn grin.

But it’s not the same. She can see blood smeared on it and the way it’s shaking. Because he knows. “I told you,” Clarke says. Her voice is strained, but she forces her fists to unravel. “I’m not dying in here. I never was.”

Emerson’s grin fades away and he grits his teeth. He pushes himself up, but only enough so he’s sitting on the floor again, his back against the wall. Clarke’s eyes track every pained, slow inch of movement. “You’re a cockroach, dog. Always were,” he pants, and he laughs again, so empty it would echo in a church. “You just won’t fucking die. Either you’ve got Death loving even the monster in you, or Death sees what you are—what you _really_ are—and even he doesn’t want your damned fucking kind.”

Clarke slowly crouches down till they’re eyelevel.

He swallows and tries to push further back into the wall but there’s nothing. Nowhere to go, nowhere to run. End of the rope. “You don’t have to do this,” he begs.

Clarke smiles. “Don’t I?”

“I can give you money,” Emerson rushes out.

She just stares at him.

“I can make you rich. I know you want that, _everyone_ wants that.”

“You think a cockroach cares for a mansion?”

Emerson curses viciously, knowing he’s running out of options. “Look, I—I’ve _seen_ you in those fights. You’re not a killer; you don’t crave that. I’m fucking begging you now, alright? I’m begging you for mercy—”

In a blink she’s grabbed the back of his head by his hair and roughly forces his chin up, showing his neck, his throat. “ _Mercy_? You want fucking _mercy_?” Clarke seethes, her lip curled up in a snarl. “If you want mercy, Emy, then _fine_. I will give you every mercy—but only the mercy that you gave me.” She leans closer, till her face is right next to his own. “Does that comfort you?”

“Please,” Emerson wheezes, scrambling to grab her wrist.

Clarke ignores him. “Or does that scare you?” she whispers, deathly quiet. “Because if it does, then that tells me that you know. You know why you are here. You know what you have done, and you know what I will give you, in return for what you gave me.”

Emerson stares at her eyes wide, panting wildly before seeming to abandon hope and tearing his head out of her hold, even if he doesn’t have the strength to get off the floor, and then he’s yelling at the top of his lungs, begging for help, begging for someone to fucking _save him_.

Clarke merely patiently waits till he stops for air. “You know,” she says, casual as anything, and he’s only halfway through getting his breathing back when her hand shoots out and grabs his throat and shoves him into the wall. His eyes widen, hands surging up to rip her fingers off. It doesn’t work. “My first night here, you know what I was told? Don’t scream. Because no one will come.” He chokes on his last scrabbling’s of air, his face redder by the seconds. Her fingers dig in tighter. “Now, we may wait, if you like, to see if Lexa was wrong. But I think that you’ve been here long enough to know how long we would have to wait for.”

She waits until she sees his eyes start fluttering before releasing her hold. He gasps, coughing while desperately getting oxygen back into his lungs. “Pl-Please. I’ll give you anything— _anything_ —just, just let me go. Let me—”

“Anything?”

Emerson’s eyes go wide in relief. He nods frantically, like he knows he’s only earned a few seconds at best. “Whatever you want, I swear. I fucking _swear_.”

Clarke raises a brow, watches the desperate pleading on his face before nodding slowly. “Tell me, what did you do with my things when you first took me?”

“Your—your things?” Emerson repeats, frowning.

“I had a watch.” She’s not surprised to see the slow understanding dawn in his eyes. Even so, it doesn’t stop the renewed force she uses to haul himself back to his feet and slam him into the wall, keeping her arm pinned across his chest and balling the neck of his shirt in her fist. She forces a strained laugh. “I knew you’d keep it. People like you can never resist a trophy.”

Emerson swallows. His face is so pale and slick, now. She can’t work out if it’s because of fear or the blood loss from the slash in his stomach. Probably both.

“Tell me where it is,” Clarke says, calmly holding his terrified stare, “and you can have your mercy.”

Emerson hesitates just a second. “My locker, in the safe. The code is—the code is 1986.”

She gives him a dull look. “The code is your birthday?”

“My wife’s,” he says, looking at her like this will change her mind, will make her hesitate.

It doesn’t. “If you’re lying to me, Emy…”

“What?” he growls, and there’s his old self back right there, all that familiar hate in his voice. At this point she can’t even tell which of them despises the other more. “You’ll kill me?”

Clarke doesn’t answer and just steps back, releasing him. He freezes and stares at her, but Clarke only stares right back, moves to the side. Waves a hand out for him to go. He stays frozen a second more, before cautiously he starts forward. At first his steps are hesitant but the further they get along the room the more they turn from a shuffle to a jog, and even though he’s still holding his bleeding stomach suddenly he’s _running_ , making that last go for the sunset.

She pulls the gun free from behind her back.

He almost makes the door. Two shots hit his back, though, and he slams into the floor, groaning and cursing. Clarke watches impassively as he struggles there, flat on his front and trying to push up, get even just to his elbows, only for them to immediately give out and collapse into nothing again, bleeding out a puddle onto the floor.

Just to see, Clarke lets the magazine slip out from under the gun and eyes the bullets. They’re silver. And while silver is good against _werewolves_ and any other creature where direct contact alone will have the skin smoking—on people they’re lesser, the density lower so the bullet has less power, while being so much _harder_ than lead that the bullet doesn’t like flattening, either. Will just resist against the rifle barrel, pierce straight through the flesh instead of impacting.

It won’t kill him. Not instantly, at least.

Clarke throws the emptied gun off to the side and walks up to him, digs her foot under his side and kicks him over onto his back. But even when he rolls over and meets her eyes, blood overflowing down the edges of his mouth, he doesn’t even look that surprised at the betrayal. Like this is exactly what he should have expected of her, really. This was always how it would go.

“You really thought I’d let you off that easy, dog?” Clarke says in a whisper, staring hard into his eyes.

Emerson’s face twists into a snarl and he _tries_ to say something—probably an insult—but then he’s coughing, racking, wet coughs that sound about as painful as they must feel. Clarke uses the distraction and crouches down, settles herself over his hips to pin them down. He seems to know exactly what’s going to happen because even still coughing he attempts to twist out from under her, throw her off.

She catches both his wrists easily. He’s already weakened and slow. “Sixty-seven,” Clarke snarls, tightens her grip until she feels the bones underneath, feels it _creak_. “Sixty-seven _fucking_ days. You wanna count with me, Emy?”

She twists his wrist back in one harsh movement until it breaks. Emerson _yells_ and clutches it, holding it to his chest. Tears spring up from his eyes even while he screws them shut, breathing hard and fast through the pain. By the time he finally wrenches them open again and glares at her, burning with that same hate that has been there right from the beginning, that’s only festered in the exact same way Clarke’s has; he only gets halfway through opening his mouth before her fist smashes into his jaw.

“One,” Clarke pants roughly, baring her teeth. She punches him with her other fist. “Two.” Another. “ _Three_.”

She keeps going.

He passes out somewhere around thirty, just limp beneath her. It doesn’t make her stop. _Nothing_ could, and her eyes are clouding in and out now, a sheen of gold blurring the world, her punches more like slashes, her own claws cutting into _her_ flesh, making blood fly all over the room with each swing. When she finally makes it to the end and every day is relived, her elbow pulls back but it hovers there, frozen.

His face is barely a face anymore. It’s a bloody mess.

Clarke pushes off him and stands up. Slowly, she backs away, reaching for the bottom of her shirt. Already her insides are clawing and burning beneath her skin. She only just saves her clothes in time before she’s bent down on the floor, her face in a wolf’s snout and every sound around her twice as loud, the air tasting twice as stale, blood all she can smell.

Emerson doesn’t move, not even when there’s a wolf now in the room with him, teeth bared and stringing salvia over the bloody floors.

Clarke prowls back over to him and all she can see is Atom’s face playing over and over in her head.

When she bites viciously into his shoulder, Emerson’s eyes snap wide open.

He flails wildly for her, blind from his swollen shut eyes, but Clarke easily ducks away from the flying fists and springs back, watching as almost immediately the bite courses through him. He thrashes and keeps trying to kick and punch at her but it does nothing. Clarke just watches him silently, his screams and tortured curses echoing in the tight room.

Usually a werewolf bite takes hours to kill. It’s a slow death, a gradual build of constant agony until the body eventually gives up, realises there’s nothing it can do but let go. But Emerson’s system is _already_ going through an excruciating amount of strain from the gunshots and beating alone. It’s doubtful he’ll last longer than an hour at most, and even _that’s_ being incredibly generous.

The shift back is too early but Clarke doesn’t care. When she pulls up to two legs again her whole body is trembling and jumping beneath her skin, the world barely visible through the blurry, red haze. A streak of wetness dribbles over her mouth, tastes like metal. Clarke just wipes away the crimson seeping from her eyes with her trembling hands and reaches for her only clothes. By the time she’s done Emerson is still thrashing wildly from the floor, though he’s stopped spitting insults and has devolved into plain begging, his voice breaking from the screams.

Clarke stumbles her way over to the front of the room and collapses back into the wall, sliding down until her knees are up to her chest. Mindlessly, she flexes her fingers, feels each one ache and tremble from the abuse. Emerson starts wailing for someone to end it for him, to stop the pain. To show mercy.

She watches him without moving, not even blinking.

It takes a while.

-

Lexa is standing outside when Clarke finally steps out.

She’s wiping the blood from her knuckles with the bottom of her shirt, but she glances up as she walks out to see Lexa leaning against the wall, waiting for her. Lexa pushes herself off and straightens up while Clarke slows to a stop. They stare at each other for a long and tense minute.

“You were taking a while,” Lexa says at last, breaking the silence. “I got concerned.”

Clarke slowly lets her bruised hands hang freely at her side. Lexa’s eyes momentarily shift down, eyeing the damaged mess of her knuckles, fingers almost completely crimson red from the gore, and then trailing up, settling on the sprays of blood staining her shirt. Smeared over her mouth.

“Cage?” Clarke says.

“Dead.”

Clarke nods, keeps nodding.

Lexa stares at her.

“And Emerson?”

Clarke glances over her shoulder, watching the closed door. Watching what’s behind it. “How long have you been standing there?” she asks, instead of answering.

Lexa doesn’t reply, but that tells Clarke all she needs to know.

“You come to judge me?” Clarke says, looking back to Lexa with a sardonic smile. “Damn me for my sins?”

Instead of answering Lexa just watches her, before finally she comes forward and pulls her into a tight embrace, wraps her arms around her and gently places a soft kiss into her shoulder. Clarke can only resist it barely a second and then she’s blinking the heat out of her eyes and throwing her arms around Lexa too, burying her face into Lexa’s neck and fisting back the back of shirt, breathing in her scent and trying so bad to get lost in it all.

“You do what you need to survive,” Lexa whispers into her ear, so _soft_ and gentle and forgiving. “We leave it all here. We survive. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m tired of surviving,” Clarke whispers back. The tears finally spill even as she tries to stop them.

Lexa hugs her tighter. “Me too. But we just have to do it a little bit longer. I have to end this. I’m going to search the rest of this place; none of Cage’s men can walk out of here. Nothing like this can happen again. I know the rest of us are out in the arena, but…”

“No,” Clarke says, knowing where Lexa is going. She finally pulls away, though lingers enough in Lexa’s space their foreheads still touch, and she still doesn’t yet open her eyes. It gives the illusion she’s anywhere else. It’s just Lexa. Just them. “I’ve got something I need to end, too.”

Lexa nods against her. “Okay. Will you meet me, though? Once this is over? Back at the arena? Monty and the others have freed the last of us, I believe. They will be at the arena. By the time we meet there, I suspect there’ll be nothing left to fear.”

“Be careful,” Clarke says, opening her eyes and stepping back just enough so she can hold Lexa’s own. “The guards won’t go down easy.”

“Neither will I.”

Clarke chuckles a little and leans forward so she can press a small kiss onto Lexa’s lips. “Be safe, then. And good hunting.”

Lexa smiles softly even as she steps back. She doesn’t turn around till the last possible moment, her hands trailing down Clarke’s arms to her wrists and then to her fingers, almost tugging her back before finally accepting it and brings her hands back to her sides, even if something aches in her eyes at losing the physical tether.

Clarke watches her go and doesn’t turn around until she can’t see Lexa anymore.

Finding the staff room takes a bit, but not a lot. She has to take a few extra corners and halls and even ends up passing by one room near the end that’s just one long hall, with thick metal doors peppered along each side. Each of them has window shutters that Clarke slides open each time—both to make sure the cell inside is empty, and also to get pissed at seeing how much better some others had it.

These are clearly the cells for the money rollers. The real big event numbers, mythical legends that rakes in the millions just to earn the privilege of a _peek_ at their existence. The rooms all look like the inside of a zoo. One of them, she glances in and even finds it has a whole damn _pond_ there in the centre, greenery and plants and small trees all dotted around, the cold stone floors hidden by layers and layers of earth.

Clarke spends about a minute staring wide-eyed through the narrow slit into the terrarium before one huge golden eye pops up from nowhere.

“Fuck!”

She lurches back, her heart tripping over her chest and racing so fast it almost comes crashing out through her ribs. A loud, furious growl echoes from inside the cell, and after waiting for the risk of heart attack to subside Clarke shakily approaches again, looks in.

The monster inside keeps growling. It’s backed away now, so that she can actually _see_ what it is and almost immediately she kinda wishes that it hadn’t. It’s _big_ and covered in blood red scales, but unlike the snake creature before, this one prowls back and forth on four heavily muscled legs, all that power shifting beneath with every stretch of movement. Rows and rows of spikes trail the whole way up its back, right along to the tip of a sweeping, horned tail. They get smaller and more bunched as it climbs up its neck, and then like a mane at the top of its head.

The head that looks a lot like a dragon’s.

No wings, though.

When it bares its horrible, endlessly long teeth they even have _her_ cringing. Those are the sort of teeth that rip you open with so much ease it’s almost a fucking joke.

Clarke steps back and fumbles for the ring of keys she’d stolen off Emerson’s lifeless body. There’s a whole handful of them knocking around, but particular ones—the _special_ ones—have got masking tape wrapped around with little scribbles of the appropriate creature’s name. She thumbs out the one labelled _drake_ and shoves it in the thick lock, twists it free.

The drake stops growling. Clarke grunts, wrapping her hands around the circle hatch and stiffly jerking it open. The door is so heavy that she has to put all her weight it just to drag it backwards. She’s panting by the time that she’s finished, when she can step back with a relieved sigh.

The drake falters, before slowly it stalks its way through the open door. It freezes just before—massive claws hesitating to cross that line—but Clarke just raises her brow, gesturing an exhausted hand out to say come on, let’s go, get moving. The drake narrows its eyes, the vertical pupil turning sharp. It listens, though, and creeps forward.

They stare at each other.

Clarke clears her throat a little awkwardly.

“Everyone’s getting their revenge out in the arena,” she says, and points out the direction she’d come. The drake glances down that way before looking back to her.

 _You have my thanks for my freedom, shifter,_ it says, telepathically. Its voice is like nothing she’s ever heard. Like if the very earth had a mouth.

“Uh… no problem?”

The drake blinks once more in thanks and then lurks past her, following the way back. Clarke watches the foot-long thick spines ripple along its back and feels intense relief at knowing she never had to fight that. Even if she _did_ survive, it would be in extreme pain, probably.

She shakes her head to herself and keeps walking.

The staff room is only a couple more doors down. She has to flip through Emerson’s wallet and find his security card, and then it’s just a matter of swiping through the card reader, waiting for the _beep_ and the red to switch to green, and then the door is open and she’s stepping through where none of her type ever have. Just like that.

Clarke is more careful as she stalks through this area. This is for the guards, for changing and eating and breaks. It’s doubtful any of the others have pushed this far in. If there are any guards not caught in the arena and guarding the cages, _here_ is where the stragglers will be. And the ones who ran. So Clarke strains her hearing, crouched low and watching out for any twitch of movement.

There’s no one, though.

It’s been long enough that any of the deserters are all gone by now. Clarke’s heart damn near stops in her chest when right as she finds the door reading _staff room_ —she freezes at seeing the elevator sitting at the end of the hall. The elevator with a panel nailed in next to it with the ground floor clearly labelled and easy to press.

The ground. _Freedom_. The goddamn exit.

Because her hands are shaking, she numbly makes her way over to it and stares down at the panel. Slowly—so damn _slowly—_ she raises her hand, lets her finger push the button in.

Nothing happens. It doesn’t light up, doesn’t make a sound.

Nothing.

“Figures,” Clarke mutters through a scoff. With a sigh she forces herself to pull away and head back to the staff door. Chances are the place got put into lockdown or something, and so all elevators got shut down. Even from here Clarke still hear the screams from the arena. Cage probably pulled the plug the moment he realised everything was going tits up.

The staff room is empty, when she steps in. It’s obvious any of the guard dogs who’d been bumming around had run out without warning. The weapons rack shoved up against the wall is empty, just hooks and straps holding nothing, and even on the small table sitting on the centre, next to the basic looking kitchen—some guards were clearly in the middle of a poker game when the sirens went off.

Clarke slows, takes a glance at the cards splayed out on one side of the table.

An ace and two queens.

Probably would have won.

The lockers are at the other end of the room. Her fingertips drift over the cold metal, playing over each name until finally they skim over the one saying _C. Emerson._ She stops, doesn’t bother trying to unlock it and just gets a firm grip on the handle, ripping it open with a grunt. It’s clearly _too_ much strength, though, and the flimsy metal tears right off the hinges and clatters into the floor.

The safe inside is small and mechanical. It’s not electronic, so Clarke reaches in and dials the wheel manually, listening to the soft _click_ of each turn as she spells out 1-9-8-6. Something trips over in her chest once she’s finished, and she forgets to breathe until she grabs the knob and pulls it open only for the metal to _thunk_ and remain firmly locked.

Emerson gave her the wrong code.

Clarke laughs hopelessly and hangs her head, pushing her hands flat against the wall of lockers either side of his, mutters, “A prick to the fucking end.” She closes her eyes and feels her hands curl into fists. Except—something _sparks_ in her, something dark and merciless and pained and she _feels_ the metal tear under her fingers. Under her claws.

When she finally blinks her eyes open again, the iris is melting into yellow.

“We do it the old way, then,” Clarke whispers, has to even her breathing that wants to spiral until she’s down on all fours. Instead she reaches in and gets a solid grip enough on the safe she can drag it out, balance the weight in her arms and throw it down onto the ground.

She drops to her knees, carefully wraps her fingers around the notched wheel and secures her hold.

It takes a solid minute of pulling.

At the start every muscle in her arm is corded and shaking badly, even parts of her shoulder and back straining under the pain of it, but the longer she pulls the more the muscles actually start _changing_ too—rippling under her skin, her arms, her back. And all the while the growl rocking through her chest shifts deeper and more guttural until even all the tendons in her fingers start popping and snapping, her insides burning, nails scratching white marks into the dark steel.

The safe finally gives with a horrible scream of metal, and then with a triumphant snarl she jerks her hand back and the safe door comes ripping off with it. It goes flying behind her and Clarke slumps in relief once it’s done. She curses, as she uselessly shakes the residual pain and shock out of arm, rolls her stinging shoulder while waiting for her panting to even out.

Every second of pain is worth it when she glances in and sees her father’s watch sitting inside.

Clarke smiles in relief. Her fingers are still trembling, but she reaches in and gently cradles the watch into her hands. She slips it on and it feels like she can breathe for the first time in months at the familiar weight of it pressing on her wrist.

She stands up. Her eyes track to the door, but Clarke stops before she makes the length of the room, glances back.

To the fridge.

Can’t hurt to try, right?

A loud _boom_ echoes through the whole complex. The fluorescent light above shakes dust, flickers on and off. Clarke ignores it and positions herself in front of the fridge, pulling it open and almost crying in relief at seeing a fucking cold _beer_ standing up proudly inside. She snags it and twists the cap off, the first swig tasting like absolute goddamn heaven.

Assuming werewolves even get a heaven.

Clarke shoves her hand around inside the fridge, still drinking with the other. She stops at seeing a Tupperware container shoved up near the back. A sticky note with _Do not fucking touch_ in all caps is plastered right on top. So Clarke touches it and pulls the leftovers out. She stands up, turning the box over in her hands and eyeing what’s inside. Looks like something the chef must’ve made. Some sort of beef stew. Chef’s leftovers?

Clarke takes another casual swig and hums pleasantly at the sorely missed taste before strolling over to microwave, punching it open and sliding the Tupperware in. She gives it a minute and steps off to the side, leans back into the counter and closes her eyes, tips her head back. The microwave hums and rumbles.

Another distant roar sounds. A wave of screams follows immediately after. The drake probably caught up, finally. Sounds like a nasty fucker to face. Is it burning the whole place down? Can drakes even breathe fire, or was that something only their winged-cousins could do?

The microwave beeps. Gunshots go off. Clarke hums something mindless in the back of her throat and pulls the box out. But then she’s hissing a curse, not realising how hot the damn plastic had gotten. With a scowl and after sucking her finger briefly this time she very _carefully_ shuffles the Tupperware out onto the counter. She searches for a spoon and manages to steal one from a drawer behind her.

The first mouthful tastes as divine as she’d thought it would.

“Damn,” Clarke whispers, because, sure, as much everyone working in here is scum of the earth but _fuck_ did they get a good chef. A part of her is almost going to miss it when she walks out. Maybe the chef got out before the slaughter. Maybe.

Only holding the still steaming-hot Tupperware with the tips of her nails, she carries it over to the table in the middle of the room and collapses down into the chair. She pushes all the cards off in one broad sweep and dumps the leftover box on the now clear space. There’s a wide TV hanging high on the wall across from her. She has to fumble around for the remote, but she finds it and turns the TV on.

It flashes onto some horror flick. A woman is crying, blood sprayed over her face. A body is laid out below her. The man’s eyes are all glazed and empty. She’s curled over him, sobbing into his chest. The music is swelling up, though. Like something’s coming. Like this is just the beginning.

The doorbell goes off. The woman looks up, and just as suddenly the music cuts out all at once, snuffs into silence.

Clarke spoons another bite unfazed.

The screaming from the arena gets louder. There’s a burst of gunfire, but it sputters out just as suddenly. She turns the volume all the way up, till even whispers sound like an earthquake and takes a hard swig of her beer, kicks her feet up on the table, leans so far back in her chair she has to balance the two legs.

“Should have ran,” Clarke says into her beer, as the woman trapped in the screen goes to open the door only to find the killer’s right there waiting for her, lightning flashing behind him, the blade of his axe shining.

They never run when they should.

-

Lexa comes back.

It’s some timing, because she returns right as Clarke finally decides to get up. The film’s long finished, the screen all full of static with nothing left to run off. She’s only just uncrossed her feet from where they’re propped up on the table when the door to the break room opens.

Clarke isn’t surprised. She’d clocked her scent less than a minute before. It’s why she was about to stand up.

Lexa stops in the doorway, eyes rapidly scanning the room inside before landing on her. Something nameless eases in her shoulders but all that Clarke can see is the blood that’s smeared all over her mouth. Dripping off her chin. On her hands. Over her shirt.

Massacre, alright.

“You weren’t at the arena,” Lexa says.

Her voice still doesn’t sound human. And there’s that look in her eyes, that only monsters have. Like reality hasn’t settled all the way in yet. Even from here Clarke knows she wouldn’t find a spec of green in them.

She shrugs, bringing her feet back down to the floor. “I think I’ve had enough death. Anything go wrong?”

Lexa shakes her head no.

She nods and gives the room one last look—one last glance to _remember_ —and then she’s walking over to her, stepping right up into her space. Usually, this would be something like a challenge. But the closer she gets the more Lexa seems to relax. Clarke tangles her fist into the bottom of Lexa’s shirt, tugs her in until Lexa leans down and can kiss her.

She tastes like blood and violence and all they’ll never be forgiven for, but when Clarke sways back her eyes flutter open to see the forest back inside Lexa’s iris. Clarke smiles softly for it, though she licks the pad of her thumb and then reaches up, wipes away the blood that’s already congealing on Lexa’s mouth. Since the shirt is a lost cause, she uses the collar to pull it up. Get rid of the remnants.

Lexa never looks away from her through all of this.

“You’re not breathing,” Clarke murmurs, thumbing the last bit off Lexa’s bottom lip. There’s still a faint red haze but it’s better.

“You make me forget.”

“That a compliment?”

“I don’t know,” Lexa whispers, honest.

Clarke’s eyes drop lower, staring into the rip through Lexa’s shirt. Right where her heart is. The flesh has already knitted itself back together, but there’s still obvious evidence of what she had done. Bleeding half-scars dotted around, almost in a circle, in the same shape that she’d mercilessly shoved her fingers through.

It’s unlikely the guilt will leave her anytime soon.

But they can leave _here_.

“I tried the elevator,” Clarke says, keeping her voice low. She sighs. “Didn’t work. Cage probably shut it all down.”

Lexa nods. They’re still so close that she feels the movement nudge her nose. “I found him late. He had already gotten to his office. He was making a go for his money, before he ran.”

Clarke scoffs, unable to help it. “Of course he was.”

They sink in the silence together. She balls Lexa’s shirt even worse in her fist, pulling her closer even though it means nothing, just needing to _feel_ her.

“The crowd,” Clarke realises at last. Everything inside her rallies against it, but she leans back so they can meet each other’s eyes. “They can’t take the elevator. It’s separate.”

“There’s a second exit,” Lexa finishes, following along.

“Everyone still at the arena?” Lexa nods they are. Clarke steps away, though the fleeting look of longing in Lexa’s eyes flashes just a second, eased the moment she realises that it’s only so Clarke can move around to Lexa’s side and entwine their hands together. “We should start there, then.”

Lexa moves first, tugging their joined grip until she follows.

The arena’s a mess when they find it. It smells even worse, and Clarke does her best to only give the carnage a passing glimpse, already knowing this’ll be the type of memory that ends up glued to the back of her eyes. There’s no regret in her, though. That can be for later. And when they step in, and all the survivors glance over, some of them still neck-deep in it—they all fall silent, all straighten up.

Clarke has never had so many eyes on her before. Especially not like _this_ , either. Like she’s supposed to save them all.

“Is this a bad time to mention I hate public speeches?” Clarke mutters to Lexa, trying to go for the casual tone she’s known for but failing on all fronts. At least Lexa seems to pick up the slight panic in it, because she glances to her, offers just a firm squeeze to the hand she’s still holding.

“What would you want said to you?”

Clarke thinks it over. But it’s not really needed. She already knows exactly what she wants to hear. All she does is take in one deep breath to steady herself and then steps forward.

“We’re going home,” Clarke says, as firmly as she can, makes sure she catches every one of their stares.

They all look back like they believe her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *who let the dogs out plays faintly in the distance*
> 
> hope you enjoyed that lads. thank you for taking the time of day to read. next chapter will be like an epilogue basically. expect a lot of domestic fluff as a sincere apology for all the insanity i put through :)  
> i wish you all well and to stay safe. the second wave has started in a lot places. remember to look out for each other, and wash your hands!


	5. like the last star before dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the wait. basically what i thought was going to be a Quick wrap up naturally turned into the longest chapter in the entire fucking fic. here is 43k of them being in love. and only like a LITTLE violence
> 
> jokes aside, though, i do want to say a sincere thank you for all the comments and support on this fic. they are absolutely what motivated me enough to finally finish this bloody thing. some of you are just way too fucking kind and i would help bury a body for you without question. i love you. anyway! i hope you enjoy lads :)

_I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful—_

_These are truly the last days."_

_You grabbed my hand_

_And we fell into it._

_-_ [ _The Dead Flag Blues by Godspeed You! Black Emperor (1997)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGKc3T7OVHE)

The walk to the surface is long.

Their group is big, though there are fewer numbers than estimated. It’s inevitable they’d take casualties on their side but the guilt still festers inside Clarke, anyway. The only last kindness they can give, that after stepping through the gaping hole in the cage arena—where all the bars are warped and bending over themselves, like some powerful enough creature had got a good grip there, had pulled the bars wide open with sheer force and hatred alone—the only kindness they can give is to pull up all the bodies of their own, and haul them instead onto their backs.

They carry them out from here. Because even if it’s too late, and maybe it doesn’t really matter in the end, but at the very least: their bodies will know the touch of the earth. They’ll know fresh air, the feel of cold dirt piled over their skin. This is how they will be forgiven.

Following through the way the crowd had been funnelled in leads to a massive tunnel. The space is wide and arches over enough that a near endless line of cars back up all along the side, hugging the rocky wall. The tunnel keeps going and _going_ , slopes upwards in the road to freedom. Clarke pauses when she passes by, stepping up to one of the many million-dollar sport cars and peering in, eyeing the inside.

Realistically, breaking in wouldn’t be all that difficult. If they wanted, they could just go back to the arena and comb through the bodies, searching every pocket for some keys, then come back here, walk up by each one and keep clicking until the right car talks back.

She’s spent the past two months locked up in a box, though.

“We walk?” Clarke says to Lexa, the both of them at the head of the mismatched brigade behind them. It’s almost comical, the sheer contrast of people and creatures. Octavia stands next to another vampire, leaning into his side, but right next to him is a towering ogre with bulging tusks sticking up from his mouth. He carries the lifeless body of an elf in his rippled arms gently, though. And right next to _that_ sight is the drake from before, though its scales are all bloodied now, thick with war.

Her mother had told her once that some races are born with natural glamours, with magic already in their blood that distorts the way they look so they could pass off for human-looking if you didn’t think twice on it. So you can _smell_ magic, but you can’t see it. The fact that all of them now are visible and open was deliberate. It’s one last _fuck you_ to the prison behind them.

“We walk,” Lexa agrees, the relief in her voice even worse than what Clarke feels.

Lexa had been here long before her, after all.

“You can drive up if you want,” Clarke yells back to the army behind them.

None of them make a move for the cars.

Clarke shrugs, turns back to Lexa with a half-hearted laugh, and takes that first step forward. “Onwards and upwards, I guess.”

Lexa offers some weak smile back to her but does the same.

They trek for a long while. With the insanity of the escape behind them exhaustion settles into them mercilessly. Clarke can feel exactly where every ache in her body is, where the strain of events she’d been forced through catch up to her. She’s not even that surprised when she feels something brush up against her leg, and she glances down only for a shot of adrenaline to burst through her, before she relaxes again, after her brain realises the panther stalking next to her is someone she knows.

Raven glances up once she senses Clarke’s staring. It’d be a death sentence no doubt, but it still doesn’t stop the innate human instinct in her that wants desperately to run her fingers through Raven’s fur. And anyway, who’s ever got to say they pet a panther and _lived_ before? That’s as good as it gets.

It must be too obvious on her face, because the panther alongside her only glances up with those dark eyes and mouth stretching wide open, just enough so that Clarke can see the warning of deadly teeth there, the deep growling that ripples out through her chest a terrifying echo inside the tunnel. But then she moves closer to her. Nudges Clarke’s hand swinging by her side with her nose.

Clarke’s heart is still pounding recklessly behind her ribs, but slowly she tilts her hand up, lets it slide over Raven’s head, between her ears.

It feels rougher than she’d thought it’d be. Especially the further back she pushes, gliding her palm up over her head and more to Raven’s neck. The further she goes the courser it gets. She can’t help but grin a little, enjoying it even more when the growling shifts into something else. Still loud and deep and _terrifying_ , but—Raven seems to almost trip over herself, lost in the sensation of scritches between the ears.

“You like that?” Clarke says through a smirk, and unsurprisingly Raven rips her head away, baring those death omen teeth at her. She just rolls her eyes but dutifully holds up her hands in peace. “Hey, there’s no shame in it. I once fell asleep when someone found this particular spot.”

“Which spot?” Lexa asks from beside her.

“You will never find it,” Clarke retorts back.

Lexa arches a brow, but the grin working its way across her face tells her quite plainly she _will_ find it.

Behind them, Clarke catches a passing look at that ogre from before leaning down towards the vampire. Octavia stiffens up, glancing between them, but the ogre doesn’t speak—probably doesn’t know English, or a language that anyone here recognises anyway—instead holds out the body he’s still cradling in his arms, making this curious grunting sound, like he’s trying to ask something.

“Lincoln,” Octavia warns, but the vampire, _Lincoln_ , he just shakes his head, says that it’s fine.

“I got it,” Lincoln tells him gently, and he reaches forward to transfer the body over into his arms. He grunts a bit at the new weight, but soon he settles the corpse into his grip, hooks one arm under the elf’s knees and the other to support their back. The ogre shakes his arms out once he’s done. The weight must’ve caught up to him. When Clarke glances down at her watch, it shocks her to discover it has been a whole hour since they began the journey up. They’re _deep_ , deep. Though maybe it’s more at fault with the speed of their exhausted steps.

Clarke twists her neck back to front and is unsurprised to find Lexa had been watching the interaction too. “Do you know him?” she asks softly, noting the way Lexa’s eyes had lingered over Lincoln. Even more telling is the respectful nod he gives her at catching her stare.

“He’s Trikru,” Lexa says, her voice just as soft as Clarke’s.

“Is he the one you…”

She can’t finish the sentence, but Lexa looks to her and hears what’s not said anyway, the edge of her mouth quirking up even if the weight in her eyes seems to worsen. “I’m not his first,” Lexa explains. Clarke nods, lodging this. “He _is_ my coven, though.”

“You wanna catch up with him?”

“I will have plenty time once I am home. I am happy here with you.”

Clarke definitely does not blush. Because that would be stupid. And embarrassing. “You looking forward to the big family reunion?”

Lexa huffs a laugh. “Anya and Gustus, yes. The rest…” she gives a shrug, looking like she already knows exactly how the scene of events will play out. “We shall see.”

“My mom will probably kill me,” Clarke offers.

Lexa bumps against her shoulder gently in solidarity.

And some indiscernible amount of time later, they finally begin to see it. The air inside tunnel cools down and the smell even changes too. It turns less stale and clean and more earthy, like wet dirt. More like the surface. The tunnel has been spiralling for a while, but now it straightens out, and despite the exhaustion that’s pulling at every one of them—that first peek of the cave mouth above has them all speeding up.

A chain-link gate sits right at the last length of the tunnel. There’s a boom gate next to it, and a toll booth tucked beside that, where presumably they’d have guards standing and waiting around to make the spectators paid the admission fee before letting them through. Except the gate is deformed. All caved inwards and splattered over the ground where someone had clearly just ran for the exit and bulldozed right through, not giving a damn for paying a fucking _toll booth_.

But they should have.

Because below the boom gate are spikes. For those who thought they could skimp through without paying the price first.

Clarke carefully steps over them and walks up to the car that’s turned over on its side, glass smashed everywhere, the tires all blown out. She crouches down briefly and winces at her body’s consequent protest against that decision. But she bends down nonetheless, and checks under the driver’s side.

No one is behind the wheel.

“There’s blood,” Lexa notes quietly from behind her.

Clarke smells it too. Whoever had been in the wreck had crawled out from it anyway, leaving the blood trail across the stone floor. It’s been over an hour since the breakout but who knows how far they could’ve gotten. Maybe they’re already back with civilisation. Maybe they’re still wandering out through the trees, holding their life beneath their fingers, pressed up against their ribs.

She only shakes her head to herself and stands back up. Who cares, really. Lexa offers a hand as help that Clarke takes without a fight. The tunnel mouth is _right there_ up ahead, less than fifty metres off, and so she only half clocks the drake that moves up from behind. How it bends its neck down to that pool of blood by the car, takes in a deep pull. To remember. To recognise.

In her dreams she’d always imagined the sun. Like in all the movies, that first step onto the surface is with the sun blazing down on them, glowing on their face. That’s what makes _sense_. There’s nothing that feels right about coming out from darkness only to wander into another one.

Still.

No words can describe how it feels to see that first glimpse of stars above.

Clarke drops to her knees into the dirt, the _real_ fucking dirt that stains and bleeds through her pants. It’s cold, and bites her through the meagre material, because while the clouds have parted and run off for better things—the ground is still wet, from where it had rained merely hours ago most likely.

She can taste it in her lungs. When she breathes in as deep as she can the dirt and rain climb down her throat. Around them is just forest and _nothing_. No houses, no people. Only woods.

The one sign of civilisation is the dirt road that’s been brushed and dug out directly ahead. Trees line the whole way beside like sentinels. She ends up kneeled there into the earth long enough that the rest of the survivors stumble out from behind, some of them bursting into a sprint and then never stopping, disappearing into the darkness of the woods. Others, they fall into the ground like she did. Because they made it. And they can stop, now. They can breathe.

She almost wants to sob, but all Clarke does is close her eyes and focus on the cool breeze brushing her skin. The cold and wet ground below her. The sound of the wind, the swaying of trees. Just nature itself.

Home sweet home.

-

Turns out the drake can’t breathe fire. She’d noted this in passing, as when they had all moved out from the arena Clarke had scanned the decimated area one last time in a paranoid check and she’d seen no scorch marks, no burned and smoking remains. It’s a _massive_ creature, though, each stride it takes heavy and precise with muscle. So while they can’t burn the place down, when Clarke finally pushes up from the wet dirt and cautiously approaches the drake—the beast pauses, eyes her just as close.

There’s no aggression, though. Only curiosity.

This does not settle Clarke’s nerves.

The drake looks even more terrifying than before. While the night does some job of hiding it, she can still plainly see it: the reflection off its wet scales. And it’s definitely not from rain or mud.

“You mind doing a favour?” she says, keeping a solid few metres between. Distantly, she _feels_ more than sees Lexa edge closer from behind her. No doubt she’d heard the pickup in her heartbeat.

 _You brought us freedom_ , the drake answers.

It must be an ancient creature thing, the absolute inability to answer any question helpfully.

Clarke stops herself from saying that this was really more a _group effort_ type situation, as she’s not that stupid to go arguing with an actual fucking dragon. Only one sort of person argued with dragons, and those are dead people. “We need to block it off. The tunnel. And no offence, but you’re kinda the biggest thing here, so I was sort of hoping you would…?”

 _You brought us freedom_ , the drake says, again, but then it’s lumbering its way back to the cave mouth they had trudged out from. Ominous patches of clouds still linger in the sky, and it means that the drake obscures in the fuzzy darkness once it gets close to the tunnel. Clarke has to strain her eyes, her iris even clouding into murky gold to brighten the shadows.

It’s what some animals have but humans don’t. That reflective tissue that lines the back of the eye, so that any light coming in bounces back, sends the shadows scurrying away from your vision. It’s what causes wolf eyes to glow in the dark. Because they’re not _actually_ glowing, just reflecting.

Lexa eases the last of the distance and settles beside her. She doesn’t glance to her, but merely leans into Lexa’s side in acknowledgment. Cold fingertips brush up the inside of her wrist in response. It makes the echo of a smile flit across Clarke’s mouth.

They really were under a mountain. It’s nothing towering or that you have to crane your whole head back for, but the gaping tunnel is packed into the mountain side, leaving the mouth lined with rock crawling up all around it and grass and shrubs and even some stubborn trees pushing out from the top. The structure looks _natural_. It’s not a tunnel, but just another otherwise normal section of the mountain, caved in.

Nothing to see. Nothing to think twice about.

“You get everyone?” Clarke murmurs to Lexa, eyes still glued to where the drake has made it to the underpass and has planted itself there at the edge. Then turning around, raising that hulking, spiked tail. Lining up the shot.

Lexa inhales deeply through her nose, thinking. “I believe so. There are no survivors left inside, at the very least. Myself and Raven, Octavia, others… we checked each floor, each cell. Guards will know where to hide, though. They’d have panic procedures in place, designated areas. Assuming they had any intelligence.”

“You assume a lot.”

Lexa nudges her shoulder with her own.

They both flinch at the first violent _whack_ of the drake’s tail. It slaps right into the rock and echoes like a thunderclap. Stone dust explodes into the air, cracks and fractures the cement lining, but already the drake is going at it _again_ , then again, until a fair chunk of the tunnel wall is gone and crumbled into the ground. The drake doesn’t slow down, even spins to face forward so it can just rip the rest with its claws, its teeth.

Eventually, it succeeds and tears a slab from the tunnel’s crown. Except this piece is different, has a thick metal bolt sticking up in it. The rod is a good couple metres long. It’d also clearly been partly responsible as support for the structure, because with its destruction a chain-reaction of jilted rock gives way. Only a small amount of the survivors still linger around, but all those remaining look over at the loud crash of sound.

The drake eases back, still baring its colossal teeth at the mountain, each heaving swell into its lungs rumbling with a deep growl.

But it’s done. There’s no cave mouth anymore. No one is getting in. No one is getting out.

The mountain falls.

“Would _not_ want to mess with that motherfucker.”

Clarke spins around and grins wide at finding Raven and the rest of them behind her. Raven is human now, though. And her clothes aren’t the same, but clearly from the guards. The only way to have gotten it would be if she pillaged it off one of them—which isn’t that weird, but what _is_ weird is that to have them back after she’d shifted means that someone must have carried it for her.

“Who brought you those?” Clarke asks, reaching out and pinching the guard’s jacket collar. The sleeves ride over her hands a bit but it’s mostly the right size.

Raven goes to answer only to have Octavia cut her off. “She made _me_ carry it. Didn’t ask permission either, just shoved it into my hands.”

The last part is said with a glare that ends up completely ignored. Clarke can’t help but laugh a little for it, though the disbelieved look she shares with Lexa only earns her an arched brow in response, like saying she’s _your_ friend, not mine, don’t involve me.

But when they glance back to the group, Clarke sees how Lincoln, the one vampire here she _doesn’t_ know, is staring out at Lexa. “Heda,” he says, dipping his head with it, his voice full of a respect and reverence that she’s seldom heard in her life.

Lexa nods back, though her eyes are warm. “Lincoln.”

For a moment the group is all just left standing there. Looking between each other. Waiting for something to happen.

Raven breaks the silence first. “Anybody know where we are?” 

They all glance around, trying to find anything to recognise, but Clarke is the only one who inhales deeply with it too.

To her surprise, it tugs at something vague in her memory. Her brow furrows and while she focuses and tries desperately to work out what that _something_ is that’s pulling right at the recess of her memory—she doesn’t find the answer she wants.

That’s not to say she can’t try _following_ it, though.

“Something?” Lexa asks her hopefully.

“Sort of.”

Her frown deepens, and she mulls over her bottom lip. She’s already so, so tired, and she _had_ shifted before, albeit a while ago from now, but still. The wolf has a better nose. If she wants to follow that something that calls to her…

“Shit,” Clarke sighs. Maybe she’ll just spend the next few days dead asleep after this. The next year even. “Hold my clothes?”

Lexa hesitates a second before reluctantly nodding. Clarke knows why—just one glance down shows all the blood splattered over her shirt and the dirt coating her pant legs. Not exactly appealing, especially to a vampire. Clarke withdraws back and tugs her shirt off, unable to bite off her smile when everyone but Raven panics and spins around.

Even Lexa.

Clarke lets out a tired laugh. “It’s not like you haven’t seen me naked before.”

Lexa turns her head back to meet her eyes for that. “I was being polite,” she protests weakly, and Clarke just shakes her head fondly. She sheds off the rest of her clothes quick and hands them aside, though Lexa takes them with a grimace. Her expression changes when Clarke hesitates, too, before reverently undoing the watch at her wrist and passing it over to Lexa with careful hands.

She’d never told Lexa explicitly about the watch, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Somehow, she just seems to know. Understands this is different to everything else. Lexa takes it with that same reverence and cradles it in her palm. As thanks, Clarke leans over and kisses Lexa’s cheek before stepping back, and then her spine is seizing, her insides lighting on fire.

She shakes her fur out once she’s done. That first breath in after it leaves her reeling even _more_ because the world is so much more alive through these senses. For a second, she lingers and brushes against Lexa’s leg until a hand comes down and runs over her head. It earns her an amused smile that Clarke doesn’t see, her nose stuck to the ground.

And then she’s gone, following the way into the trees.

-

It takes three hours of searching, but she finds it.

They keep walking and walking with Clarke always at the head of the brigade—sometimes veering off to chase a scent only to come right back after finding nothing useful from it—until finally the woods thin out and it’s not the scent that draws Clarke’s interest, but the _sounds_ too. It’s only a second, but the moment she catches it she splits off from the group, racing ahead. Her ears swivel back and forth over and over until it flashes by again, and then she’s pulling to a stop so fast dirt sprays out beneath her.

She listens, straining for what she’d only gotten a glimpse of.

But it’s still there.

Cars. Roads. Crackling tarmac.

Lexa catches up to her first. It’s obvious she’d run after her, though she only looks annoyed for a heartbeat before taking in how Clarke is looking back at her, eyes wide and her tail wagging fast enough that Lexa shuts up pretty much instantly.

Clarke knows exactly when she hears it.

Lexa’s eyes snap down to hers, that rare smile spreading on her lips that show off all her teeth, precisely in that way vampires are forbidden to even think about.

“You found it,” Lexa breathes.

Clarke comes back so she can brush against Lexa’s leg again.

The rest of the group catches up soon after. They come to the same realisation, even if for Octavia she has to look around in confusion to everyone’s reaction first, _especially_ Raven who honestly looks on the verge of tears, until Lincoln tells her, his voice shaky. Octavia says nothing back but her hand shoots out, squeezes his arm in a death grip. Like she needs to hold herself. Like asking if this is truly real.

Clarke is the one who tentatively creeps out from the crop of trees first. A wolf at least has some vague explanation if someone accidently snags a glance of her from across the road. The _rest_ , though, who all look like they’d just crawled up bloodily from a grave…

Probably not the best idea.

Still. To be safe, she hunches low, edging forward like it’s a minefield she’s crawling over. The last line of trees finish into grass, then dips into the ground only for the road to cut it off. No cars flash by, though Clarke strains her hearing and looks both ways nonetheless before daring to cross. It would be some fucked kinda irony to break out from an underground jail cell only to immediately after get crushed into roadkill.

All she hears is the car that had rushed past before, long gone. It must be something nearing three in the morning right now. Not exactly prime hours.

Next to the road is a sign, though. It’s big and wide and even hand painted. The gradient is uneven, one tucked up square of white paint brighter and paler while rest is yellowed, faded over time past. Most likely the result of the ageless battle between humanity’s innate need to mark the world with their memory and the resulting city council’s frustration from having to clean it up.

 _You are now leaving Tondc,_ the town sign reads. _We hope to see you again soon!_

She can feel her heartbeat thrumming through her entire body.

 _This_ is why she recognised the smell of this particular woods. She’d crashed out here for a solid few months, once upon a time. It’d been just after the shit show with Finn. When her heart was bruised and dying and she used to spend entire days lost in the endless woods. Lost in herself. It’s weirdly terrifying to think if she’d just pushed south instead of north, she might have even stumbled upon the mountain all on her own, no tranquilliser required.

She pads over to the sign, pushes up on her hinds, braces her front legs on the letters.

In that painted over corner are four old claw marks, gorged deep into the wood.

They line up with hers perfectly.

-

One last time, they all round up together.

“I know a guy in town,” Clarke starts, looking to each of them in turn. Her clothes feel twice as uncomfortable now that she’s had to climb back into them. The moment they get somewhere solid she’s throwing them into a fire and letting them burn. “He can’t house us, but he could give us a place for tonight. For the day,” she adds, more to Lexa and Lincoln.

They all seem to consider the offer.

To the least of her surprise, Raven answers first with a shrug. “I think I’ll be fine. I’d rather keep moving.”

“I would as well,” Lincoln says, though he shoots a glance to Lexa first, like asking for permission. “I want to get home as soon as possible.”

“Daylight will be soon,” Lexa cautions.

Soon is relative. It’s cold and edging up to winter. A peek at her watch tells her she was right, that it’s about three a.m. Sunrise will probably hit in around four hours. And Lexa had said before if the vampire was old enough sunrise didn’t matter so much as the afternoon did.

Lincoln just lifts up one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I will have long enough to find a vehicle. I can find shelter.”

Lexa hesitates, clearly nervous at the chance of Lincoln burning somewhere out all alone, even after everything.

“I’ll go with him,” Octavia says.

Lincoln freezes. He looks down to her, eyes wide, but even Clarke who barely knows him can see the smile ghosting across his lips, the one that he’s probably entirely unaware of. An unavoidable aftereffect of the warmth spreading through his chest.

“You are sure?” he says, still staring at her with those wide-eyes.

Octavia blushes and shrinks into herself. “Only if you want,” she backtracks quickly.

Lincoln shakes his head almost comically fast. “Of course I want.”

Raven clears her throat when the two just stand there staring at each other. “So, as _heart-warming_ as this moment is, I’m gonna split while daylight is still out. Easier to blend in that way.”

“He really wouldn’t mind,” Clarke tries again, unable to stop the desperation that leaks into her voice.

Raven gives her this rare soft look, but says nothing. Her choice is made. There’s no talking her out of it.

Damn werecats and their solitude.

“How good is your memory?” Lexa asks her, no warning.

“How dare you even ask me that,” Raven retorts.

Clarke stares at Lexa, confused, but Lexa only flashes her a nervous glance before looking back to Raven. “If I give you my address, would you meet me there, eventually?”

Raven has the nerve to smirk, wiggling her eyebrows. “Aw, you gonna miss me, Commander?”

Lexa sighs. “Yes or no, Raven.”

Raven looks to Clarke, watches her face, then back to Lexa. “I might,” she says, which is the best anybody will get.

Clarke watches on with something indescribable spasming in her chest, listening to how Lexa points out her address and then makes Raven repeat it back to her to ensure she remembers, and the whole time Clarke just _stares_ because she knows exactly why Lexa is doing this. And what it’s assuming.

That no matter where they go after this, Lexa will be with her. They’ll still be together.

The thought makes her throat seize up.

“You are invited as well, Octavia,” Lexa says once she’s done, nodding in her direction.

Lincoln looks exceedingly proud next to her. Octavia looks scared shitless she’s being directly addressed by the Commander herself.

“Uh, yeah, sure, I mean—” Octavia snaps her mouth shut, clears her throat and forces herself to _stop_ and act fucking normal. “Yes,” she tries again, the words forcefully slow and clear. “I would be honoured.”

Lexa smiles slightly, but it’s different. Not soft but not cruel. Just at ease.

Clarke is almost vibrating on her feet and can’t take it anymore. She comes forward and pulls Raven into a tight hug, slotting her chin over Raven’s shoulder and fisting the back of her shirt, hating so bad how she feels like she’s nineteen all over again and back in that field, watching the first person who made her feel normal walk away.

Raven hugs her back, laughing so quiet into her ear. “You’re ruining my rep, mongrel.”

“Like you have shit,” Clarke mutters back, but her voice cracks midway. By the time they pull back the burning behind her eyes overwhelms. “Don’t do anything stupid, hey?”

“No promises,” Raven says, and bumps her fist lightly against Clarke’s shoulder.

She ends up offering Octavia a hug too and it _almost_ seems like Lincoln and Lexa are about to do the same, except they both move towards each other only to extend an arm instead, grab the other’s just above the wrist in a tight grip.

“ _Hofli wamplei nou get yu in feis nowe_ ,” Lincoln says, squeezing her forearm to get across all he can’t say.

Lexa squeezes too, repeats the same solemn words back to him.

It only occurs to Clarke belatedly as they stand there together on the road, watching the group split off. They walk in three for a small while, but Raven breaks away first, disappearing into the trees with timeless practice. “You didn’t tell me if you’re staying or not?” she says to Lexa, frowning with it.

Lexa looks over to her and meets her eyes without shame. “It’s you and me,” she says, like there’s no other answer.

“You and me,” Clarke murmurs, but her eyes drop to Lexa’s mouth.

-

Tondc isn’t big. She and Lexa only have to follow the road back to town for half an hour before signs of civilisation make themselves known. Houses and shops and even that one diner that’s a leftover relic from the ‘60s, where you can walk in there, feel time melt all around you. For a beat Clarke makes like to head over to it, her stomach guiding her more than anything—but Lexa grabs her elbow, tugs her back.

“Not like this,” Lexa warns, and pointedly glances up and down Clarke’s appearance.

Right. Blood and gore. Et cetera et cetera.

“Would that really be so out of place?” Clarke says, though nonetheless she listens and they keep walking.

Lexa follows after her easily. It’s been a good while since Clarke was last here. Around two years or so, maybe even three. But like muscle memory her legs just seem to shadow the well-worn invisible path on their own, guiding them away from the town centre and more to the suburbs, to the rows of houses spread between. They both tense up instinctively, taking extra care that no one is awake, walking the dog, peeking through the windows.

None of those things happen.

A glance to her watch tells her they’re cutting it close, though. The early morning joggers will make their rounds soon, those psychopaths.

“Are we getting near?” Lexa asks, keeping her voice low.

Clarke nods absentmindedly. Her scope of attention is far more focused into following the scent, working through the years of her memory. “Should be. This is the area he lived in when I knew him.”

“Him?”

“This old Irish guy. He and his partner did me a solid when I was bumming around here a few years ago. Kinda looked out for me for a bit, made sure I didn’t do anything stupid.”

“A noble cause, indeed.”

Clarke swats Lexa’s arm.

“ _Anyway_ ,” she continues, very much ignoring Lexa’s smirk, “he’s good people. We can crash at his for the day and then push out at night.”

Lexa’s brow furrows in. “He won’t find this suspicious at all?”

Clarke goes silent next to her. Too silent.

Lexa’s eyes widen. “Wait, does he—?”

“Okay, so one thing I might’ve forgotten to mention… he’s crazy.” She winces, gesturing sideways with her hand. “Well, that’s what everyone thinks, but, _technically_ , he’s not.”

“Please start making sense.”

“He’s sussed us out,” Clarke says bluntly. “Like, the whole supernatural world. Believes in us wholeheartedly. He knew right off bat meeting me I was a werewolf.”

Lexa stares. “And you did nothing.”

“Nah, he’s alright. Doesn’t want us dead or anything. Long as I did no wrong by him he couldn’t’ve cared less.” Clarke glances at her with what is _supposed_ to be a reassuring smile, but Lexa seems to be considering if sanity is refundable. At least that way losing it means you get _some_ sort of goddamn compensation. In the end, Lexa must come to terms with it, though, because all she does is sigh and shoot one fruitless, hopeful glance to the heavens, before just trudging on beside her and accepting whatever is to come will come.

They don’t have to walk for that much longer before she sees it.

Unlike the other houses, the lawn in front of this one has gone completely off the rails. Garden beds line up all around the perimeter and barely _nothing_ of artificial clear space. It’s a jungle gone wild and Clarke grins without realising, rushing the last distance and winding all through the flagstone pathway, gravel hugging the sides.

None of the house lights are on. And when she walks up to porch steps, hung there from above is a woven bowl of countless herbs, the harsh smell of it wrinkling her nose like always. She’s pretty sure there’s wolfsbane in there. Something that Clarke had been deliberately tight-lipped about when he would ask her if it even did anything to her kind.

Not out of safety, of course. It was just funny to watch him guess.

At not feeling Lexa beside her, Clarke glances back, frowning.

Lexa’s only halfway up the garden path, hesitant to get any closer.

“He’s safe,” she assures, softly.

Lexa’s face doesn’t change. “Does he even still live here?”

Clarke looks up to the bowl of herbs above her head. “Sure is.”

Lexa flexes her jaw, doesn’t move.

“Alright, then.”

She turns back around and eyes up the door. Nostalgia twists in her chest a moment, but she only reaches out and presses the doorbell, lets the musical riff chime through the house. Mostly for Lexa’s sake, Clarke heads back so they’re side by side once more. She knows it’s the right choice when that muscle that’d bunched up in Lexa’s neck releases now that Clarke’s within arm’s length again.

It’s not a reaction that really deserves much blame. After _everything_ that has gone down, it makes sense that Lexa is still on edge and neck-deep in protective instincts. Everybody holds what they’d thought lost too close, anyway. Especially when you’ve only just gotten it back.

A window on the ground floor lights up. There’s some cursing, some grunting. Small yaps from a dog follow after pretty much immediately, but this encourages _more_ swearing, in the form of the scolding now. By the time it’s over and the door swings open to reveal an old, _exceedingly_ grumpy man, Clarke is almost bouncing on her feet in anticipation.

“The fuck is that?” the old man yells, squinting at them from under a worn-out beanie that looks hand-knitted, white hair in wisps sticking out beneath. He’s by far the palest bastard in the entire town and that was _before_ his skin started hanging from his bones, freckles lining the whole way up his arms, his face. At his socked feet an overeager Yorkshire Terrier is having a frenzy around him, but that dog only has to take _one_ step out from the door, get one good look and sniff at her—and bolts back inside. Right up the stairs and probably to the furthest room in the house from her. Barricading the doors, nailing the windows.

Clarke knows this reaction alone is what tips him off to who exactly has rocked up to his house at four in the morning, even before she opens her mouth.

“Hey, Seamus.”

Seamus blinks, and slowly, slowly, reaches behind the door so he can switch the porch light on. He wobbles forward, eyeing them as best as he can with the limited lighting.

Immediately after, he freezes. Sees the _blood_ on them, the war.

Clarke quickly comes forward, hands raised and open. “We just want a place to crash. It’s been a _very_ long night.” When there’s no answer, cold fear trickles down her spine. “You… you remember me, right?”

Seamus watches her for a long while.

And then he smiles, showing off his crooked teeth.

“Only dead men forget the face of wolves,” he calls back, his voice thick with an Irish accent. Once she’d asked him what specific part he’d gotten it from, but that had ended in a two-hour rant that left her more confused than before. There’d been a lot of swearing involved.

Clarke laughs, so relieved it leaves her breathless. Lexa shoots a glance between them but stays resolutely still. Ready for it all to go wrong.

Seamus waves a tired hand over to her, gesturing for her to come forward. “Didn’t kill nothing good, did you?”

“I got kidnapped,” Clarke says and, much to Lexa’s intense confusion, Seamus nods casually at this.

“Ah, I see. In you get, then. Shower’s upstairs. Gotta bedroom next to it you can nick too. You want tea, wolf?”

Clarke looks to Lexa first, though. “What about you?”

Lexa stares at her, just giving the perfect expression of _what the fuck?_

She twists back to Seamus with a shrug. “Sure. Two would be nice.”

He grunts, nodding. But he makes no move from the doorway, instead staring out at them. At Lexa. “Who’s the woman with you, love?”

There’s a long beat of silence. That muscle ticks in her jaw again, but Lexa still glances to Clarke first, like for assurance. Wordlessly, Clarke reaches down between them and entwines their hands. Lexa’s eyes drop and watch this too. Considers.

She looks back up to Seamus, caution written over every line in her face. “My name is Lexa.”

He gestures at them both. “Can’t see feck all in this dark. Come inside, will you?”

Clarke moves first, though her eyes stay tracked to Lexa’s face. It takes a moment of gentle tugging until she follows with. Seamus shuffles aside to let them pass. When they both walk up into plain view of the light, his eyes widen a fraction, finally seeing the full evidence of what they’d been through.

And while Clarke passes by him fine, for Lexa he steps in her way last second.

Lexa stiffens up and Clarke is already making a go back for her, but Seamus holds up a hand to her, tells her this isn’t an attempt to try anything.

“Now, I don’t know what you are,” he begins, his voice calm but toeing something sharp, “but there’re no sheep that got a face like you do. I got one rule for you: don’t touch me and mine. That enough for you?”

Lexa looks to him. Then over his shoulder, to Clarke, who offers an encouraging thumbs up from behind him, grinning stupidly.

 _Definitely_ no refund.

She meets Seamus’s eyes again with that same old sigh through her nose. “I will raise no hand against those that offer sanctuary.”

Seamus takes in this promise and nods firmly, moves aside to let her in. Lexa relaxes and eases past him, shooting Clarke a glare when she only rolls her eyes and mutters as quiet as she can, “Vampires, I swear to god.”

He doesn’t linger by them and happily shuffles off for the kitchen around the corner. With a smile, Clarke only pulls Lexa with her for the stairs. And while _she_ has seen the framed photos lining the wall a hundred times over, Lexa lingers by each one, analysing every detail. They all rotate through the same four people: two women, two men.

The girls grow from infants to those nervous, proud grins at first days of school, to jobs, promotions, and then there are _new_ children growing up all over again. The next generation. Two men stay consistent throughout, one being Seamus, and the other a man always smiling so softly, his white teeth sticking out starkly against his skin.

They’ve barely cleared the stairs when Seamus yells up to them.

“And don’t you touch my fucken dog, wolf!”

“Like there’s even enough meat on him!” Clarke yells back to him.

Lexa gives her an exasperated look, but she also pulls their joined hands up to her lips, presses a kiss to her knuckles.

Clarke blushes like the damned fool she is.

The bathroom hasn’t run off from where it’d sat last time, thankfully. Though, she and Lexa nudge open the door only for a blur to bolt past them, fur tickling their ankles. The little Yorkshire Terrier flies down the stairs at breakneck speed, barking frantically and turning that harsh corner, presumably to crash into Seamus’s legs.

“No faith,” Clarke mutters.

A couple towels are already hung over a rack inside. Clarke steps in eagerly, reaching down to rid her horrible, disgusting shirt off only for Lexa to catch her elbow the last minute. She rolls her eyes and drops her arms, looking over to her with a whole body sigh.

“ _What?_ ”

“We don’t have anything to change into, Clarke.”

“I think you look quite good naked.”

Lexa glares, in no way joking.

Clarke softens. “Sorry. What I _mean_ to say is that the room next door was his daughters’. They leave some spare clothes here, in case they visit and run out. We can borrow those.”

“He won’t mind?” Lexa asks dubiously.

Clarke shrugs. “Probably.”

This doesn’t seem to appease her much. Still, she _does_ at least step back so Clarke can tug her shirt off. Not every battle is worth having.

“You wanna join me?” Clarke says through a grin when Lexa just stands there uselessly with her, eyeing the shower in obvious longing. To her surprise, Lexa nods, and pulls off her gross shirt too.

That _worked?_

Lexa arches a brow when Clarke stands there like an idiot, eyes wide. She has to shake herself out of it and spins around solely to hide her blush. “Shut up,” she hisses to her, despite the fact Lexa is very much not speaking.

Not with her mouth, anyway.

But the shower goes nothing like she’d implied. While there’s a moment just after they both step in there, so close and _naked_ and breathing too hard in the fog, in the hot water encasing them both—the way it goes is so much softer, slower. Lexa turns her around in the narrow space and merely cleans off the blood and dirt from skin with gentle strokes, her mouth brushing up Clarke’s neck, kissing distractedly and with no real goal. Like just to remind she’s there.

Clarke offers the same back to her, and once they’re all free of it and standing under the stream—suddenly she’s crying, and she doesn’t really know why.

Lexa wraps her arms around her and pulls her in close. Rocking her, holding her.

There are worse ways to drown, all things considered.

-

They step out sometime later. Clarke is basically swaying on her feet. If the exhaustion was bad before, the shower has drained even those niggling vestiges of energy. Which means, while _her_ focus is single-minded in dragging herself into the spare bedroom and drying herself off with only mild success, stepping into some old college sweatpants and the baggiest t-shirt she can find—well, _Lexa_ is the one whose supernatural hearing picks it up.

She’s only just finished pulling the clean shirt on when Lexa whispers out her name in fear.

“Hm?”

“Listen,” Lexa hisses.

Clarke does, if only because that seems the fastest way she can get unconscious. And sure enough, she finds what had set off all of Lexa’s alarms.

Seamus is talking to someone on the phone downstairs, uncharacteristically excited and fast. It worsens his accent and makes it difficult to decipher his words.

“That’s right, the werewolf came back. Just turned right up to the door, she did!”

The voice on the other end sighs loud enough even Lexa and her catch it. “The werewolf? Do you mean that blonde woman from a few years ago? Clarke, I think it was.”

“One’n only. Not alone, neither. You must come home, Raffiel!”

“It is five in the morning.”

“No, _listen_ , Raff. She’s got a woman wit’ her. _Vampire_ like, I reckon,” Seamus goes on, a thrill in his voice.

Clarke just smiles to herself, shaking her head. It drops when she glances over to Lexa and discovers that the woman looks about two seconds from breaking down the door and killing Seamus.

“He’s a hunter,” Lexa says, and _already_ the green loses itself in her eyes, bleeds into something darker.

Clarke is suddenly a whole lot more awake and her arm shoots out to grab the nearest bit of Lexa’s borrowed shirt, fisting the material and stopping any movement. “Hey, _hey_. Stop, it’s fine. He’s not a _hunter._ He’s just calling his husband.”

“His—what?”

Lexa’s battle stance relaxes into neutral again. There’s this beat where Clarke hesitates, eyeing her close, before she peels back her fingers one by one, releases her. “I know,” she says, and the tension leaks from her back. “Can’t believe someone _actually_ married that man. He genuinely believes in the supernatural. Sure, he’s right, but he’s still crazy.”

Lexa’s brow furrows. “Does his husband believe him?”

“He loves him,” Clarke says, like it’s an answer. And by the way Lexa’s eyes soften maybe it is.

In the sudden quiet between them, they both listen in on the phone call again simultaneously.

“I was hoping to come back in the morning,” Raffiel says, but there’s enough defeat in his tone it’s obvious he’s already given up on that dream. “You know how Sadie—” He cuts himself off, and then his voice becomes faded, like he’s speaking to someone else. “Oh! I’m sorry. Did I wake you, sweetheart? Oh, good. No, no, I’m fine. Well, mostly. I’ll need to get back home. Your father has offered our house to a werewolf and a vampire, apparently.”

Seamus’s voice brightens considerably. “Is Sadie there?”

The mic scuffles again, and then an exasperated female voice takes over. “Just _what_ have you done now, Da?”

The family begin squabbling after that and so she and Lexa meet sights, though Lexa looks more embarrassed than anything now. “It’s alright,” Clarke soothes, reaching out and cupping Lexa’s neck, thumbing her jaw. “We’re both still an edge.”

She doesn’t get a reply, but Lexa reaches up her hand too and squeezes Clarke’s wrist through a tiny smile.

In the end, though, it’s not the bed that calls to her most. It takes only one glance out to the _window_ that sits off to the side of that bed before she knows exactly what she wants to do. Silently, she threads her fingers through Lexa’s own and pulls her with her downstairs. Lexa does so willingly, though also in slight confusion.

Seamus is still deep in the midst of explaining himself to his daughter, but at seeing them his eyes light up and he waves excitedly.

Clarke shakes her head at him, endeared. “You mind if I sleep the night out the back?”

“One second, love,” Seamus mumbles into the phone, turning away from it so he can give his full attention. “What’d you say there?”

“The lawn,” Clarke repeats, even gestures over behind him to the backdoor. “You mind if I sleep out there?”

She feels Lexa squeeze tighter and knows she understands, now. After so long trapped indoors, there’s really _nothing_ that sounds better than being able to feel the open world around them. Seamus seems to understand, too, and grunts at her.

“Ah, I see. Let me check, wolf, I know I got some old tent in my shed. There’s a fuckin’ sleeping bag somewhere, I’ll—”

But Clarke laughs and comes forward, hands raised. “I don’t need a tent, Seamus.”

He stares at her a moment, confused. A second later, his eyes blow wide. “Oh! You’re goin’ ta…?”

Instead of finishing the sentence, he holds his hands up to his head and mimes the tall curve of wolf ears, bares his human teeth.

Clarke shrugs. “If that’s alright. I won’t touch your dog,” she swears, and crosses her heart like to prove so.

Seamus considers this before finally acquiescing with a nod. “Sure, wolf. But I wouldn’t stay out too long, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Sir yes sir,” Clarke salutes. He rolls his eyes for that, and it only makes her grin wider. “What, you don’t have any neighbours that have pissed you off recently?”

There’s a pause that goes on for a second too long, like Seamus is _actually_ considering the offer, only for the silence to break with a sharp protest from the phone still in his hand.

“ _No_ , we do not,” Raffiel admonishes loudly. Seamus’s eyes snap down to the phone, guilt written all over his face, but Raffiel sighs in a way that is intensely familiar to Clarke. “I _cannot_ leave you alone for even five minutes… _fine_. I’m coming home.”

Seamus beams, showing off all his teeth.

“Tell Clarke hello for me,” Raffiel finishes with, but despite the inconvenience his voice is warm and sincere. “It will be nice to see her again. And _don’t_ let her near the fridge unsupervised.” A pause, and then: “I love you.”

“Mo ghrá thú,” Seamus murmurs.

He leaves the room empty for them, seeming to know already that even with their history—shifting in front of non-werewolves is a _deep_ matter of trust. Quietly, he shuts the door behind them so it’s only just her and Lexa standing alone in the kitchen together.

“Will you be alright with dawn coming up?” Clarke asks, keeping her voice low. She rids herself of the soft clothes tiredly.

Lexa wordlessly takes them from her, folds them all neat on the kitchen counter for later. “I know my limits. I can watch it with you.”

“Yeah?” Clarke says, unable to stop her hopeful smile.

“It’ll be nice to see the stars,” Lexa admits.

And maybe shifting just to lie outside is a bit overkill, but while lying on the ground with a _human_ back and spine will no doubt end with the joints all stiff and seized up, the wolf runs off an entirely different story. They evolved to sleep without beds, after all. It’ll hurt a lot less in the long run.

So Clarke pads out into the backyard on four legs. Luckily there’s a tall enough fence that wraps around the whole property so they can rest easy with no eyes on them, no panicked call to the pound because _dear god_ , that is a _big_ , angry looking fucking dog. She stops somewhere around the middle of the space, brushing up against Lexa’s leg before collapsing there on the grass. Lexa huffs out an amused breath, though dutifully she walks up and settles down next to her. Not long after, a hand comes out and combs the fur between her ears.

She can feel the way Lexa seems to search all through her fur. Her fingers run _everywhere_ , sliding over her head to her back and even down her tail, raking her nails through, trying to find that weakness Clarke would never admit to. If she wanted, she could stop her. Knowing Lexa if she made even one nip at the vampire’s fingers, just sharp enough to be a warning, Lexa would back off, no question. She’s noble like that.

It feels so nice, though.

Clarke licks Lexa’s wrist when it gets close enough, either as a thank you or permission she doesn’t know. And inevitably, those searching fingers find that spot just under her jaw, near the edge before it becomes her neck. With no say on her part, Clarke flops down into Lexa’s lap, and there’s that telltale rumbling going wild in her chest, the one Lexa can no doubt feel the vibrations of through her leg, hear it grind in the air.

“Found it,” Lexa says. Her voice so, so soft.

Clarke falls asleep with the stars above her and Lexa’s scent all around her. 

-

It ends up raining again, a little after sunrise.

The first weak drops don’t make much effect, her snout twitching from it but otherwise still leaving her to the mercy of her dreams. But the drops get faster and heavier and one smacks right into her eye. She’s jolting awake a second after, her head whipping up, scanning her surroundings in a frenzy.

“Only rain,” Lexa assures, and shows her hands in peace.

Clarke’s eyes linger on Lexa’s face before she slumps back down over her thigh. The lovely hand goes back to scratching that spot below her jaw and Clarke lets herself get lost inside it, still half-thick with sleep and drowsy even _without_ the sensation of absolute heaven the scratching brings.

But the rain keeps falling. And it’s getting heavier.

She whines and tucks herself further into Lexa’s lap, trying to hide from it. This only half works, because that doesn’t stop the rain from drenching the rest of her. She knows how this will end. There’s no way out of this that doesn’t involve moving.

Maybe the rain will stop in a bit.

“We should get inside,” Lexa murmurs, though when she slides her hands under Clarke’s cheek to lift her head, she chuffs and growls lightly, pushing her snout further into the lap, refusing to move a goddamn inch. Sleep is _way_ more important than some stupid rain. “Clarke,” she tries again, and has to laugh when Clarke just grumbles back at her.

The furthest she gets is blearily cracking an eye open. It’s worth it to see Lexa smiling in exasperation above her and see her hair all tumbling down. There are a lot of sights in the world, and there are a handful of wonders that everyone made the mutual choice to agree on and treat as undeniable. And then there are the sights that matter only to you. The only ones that are _really_ remembered.

“What?” Lexa says, softer now. Maybe it’s too obvious in her eyes. Even from a wolf’s.

Instead of answering, she whines again, but louder, pawing pathetically at Lexa’s leg to get across the meaning.

The rain keeps coming and Lexa blinks the streams out of her vision, staring down at her in disbelief after realising what Clarke wants. She scoffs first, looking away, but Clarke keeps whining and begging and finally Lexa sighs to herself only to slide _both_ her arms fully under the werewolf in her lap and almost scoop her up.

“You’re so lazy,” Lexa grumbles. Clarke just happily settles her head over Lexa’s shoulder while Lexa holds her up from the front, keeping one arm secured under her hind legs and the other over her upper back. “And _big_.”

She nips Lexa’s ear for that. It’s the only part of her she can reach.

The house is dark and quiet. The rain is a gentle sound, despite how heavy it’s getting. It makes her feel like she’s still dreaming in some way, lazily eyeing how the shadows turn fuzzy while Lexa grumpily carries her up the stairs and into their temporary room, has to nudge the door open with foot since she’s run out of hands.

She freezes, though. Right after they enter the room.

“There’s a dog bed,” Lexa says, like she’s testing the words out.

Clarke’s growl is low and swims up through the rain.

“Okay, no dog bed.”

Delicately, Lexa lets her down by sinking to her knees, leaning forward then turning herself to the side, so that Clarke can almost slide off and gently ease back onto all fours. She still sways on her legs after, half-asleep. Lexa smiles softly for it, but her expression soon shifts into horror at seeing how Clarke bows down and stretches all her limbs, before pulling herself back up, setting her weight down.

Lexa makes a go to get out of range but it’s too late.

Clarke shakes all the water off fur, sends droplets flying around the room.

Afterwards Lexa stands there and looks down to see that not only is her shirt drenched from carrying her over, _now_ her legs are doomed too. “Thank you for that,” she sighs, though Clarke is already leaping up on the _human_ bed and settling in. She spins around briefly, trying to get comfortable, but merely collapses down onto her front and sets her muzzle over her paws. A yawn overtakes her before she can stop it, cracks her jaw so wide that a whine escapes.

One eye creaks open to look over at Lexa.

All she gets is a shake of the head but a small, fond smile nonetheless.

“Fine,” Lexa says, like they’ve just argued at length, and comes over.

Clarke’s tail thumps against the bed as she climbs in with her. It’s a bit of effort finding the right position between the lack of real bed space, but they relax together once Lexa settles so she’s lying on her side while Clarke remains where she is and watches her through tired eyes.

“You’re going to ruin these sheets,” Lexa whispers in the dark. 

Clarke blinks slowly at her.

It’s the only way she can admit it aloud.

Sleep drags her under soon after. But it’s _heavy_ and goes for so long and so deep that the next time she surfaces she’s surprised to find herself with fingers, not paws, her hair still faintly wet and she’s not _on top_ of the sheets anymore, but under. The answer to why is pretty obvious, since Lexa is dead asleep beside her. Her face is tucked right against Clarke’s own. And she knows that they must’ve been in this position for a while because the skin of Lexa’s arm slung over Clarke’s waist has gone warm.

The rain’s even stopped. Outside, the birds are having the time of their lives. Or at least sound so.

She merely lays there in the stretch of the morning, eyes scanning over the face in front, over and over. Something old and adoring flits across her lips because unlike all those times before—even that first time that she’d seen Lexa sleep and consequently dragged her for it—this time, Lexa actually looks _asleep_ , asleep.

Her body is limp and there’s no rigid shape to her spine, no hands folded neatly in her lap. She’s boneless. Finally looks at peace. In truth, it all overwhelms at once and her heart swells up beneath her ribs, climbs right into her mouth and makes her _choke_.

It gets so bad that Lexa’s eyes blink open. No doubt she heard it, the pickup in her heartrate. How the thing is thumping so loud her chest burns.

“Thought you were sleepin’,” Lexa mumbles, still sluggish and out of it.

“I was,” Clarke whispers.

Lexa just hums. The sound comes right from the bottom of her throat, deep and rough enough that Clarke shifts closer on instinct, feels the sound spread right through her whole body. Lexa’s eyes are already closed again, though like to prove that she’s awake still, her fingertips trace lazy circles over Clarke’s naked hip. It’s something she’s admittedly grateful for since it’s almost impossible to tell if a vampire is asleep. There are no real signs.

Beyond the walls, the birds keep singing, keep screeching.

She never thought she’d miss the sound.

Finally, Clarke just says it. “Are you my girlfriend?”

The fingers drawing over her skin pause, and Lexa’s eyes open again. She doesn’t say anything, only stares and stares at her. It goes on so long Clarke gets fidgety and sneaks a hand between them, so she can fiddle with Lexa’s collar. To her credit, she’s not stopped in any way. Lexa even tilts her neck up slightly so there’s more space.

It’s an action Clarke takes extreme notice of.

Mostly because of the wolf in her. There’s deep trust in exposing your neck to someone. There’s a confession.

“We just broke out of a supernatural prison, Clarke.”

“Yeah, but did we do it as girlfriends?”

Lexa doesn’t laugh. Strangely, something passes over her face that’s obvious even through the dark. It’s not a good something, but ancient and tired. Just so, so _tired_.

“You realise I’m immortal.”

“I know.”

“And you’re not.”

“I know.”

Lexa stares at her and smiles so hollow like it hurts. “I’m not sure you do.”

But Clarke frowns. Her fingers curl tight into Lexa’s collar, bunch up the fabric. “But I do know you. And I know that… I know that I _want_ you.”

A long, long pause.

They don’t speak, just watch each other. An entire journey plays out in the face before her. How her brow furrows, jaw ticks and flexes, but the thinner the seconds stretch and the more the world seems to swallow them both whole—finally, Lexa’s face smooths out and the tension seizing her up bleeds into nothing.

“I want you too,” Lexa admits softly.

Clarke smiles without realising, even if the backs of her eyes burn. “So let me be with you. I’m not talking forever. I’m talking about now. And, besides… that’s all we have, in the end, isn’t it? We only ever have now.”

Lexa swallows. For a moment, her gaze drops lower, then up again, and a whole one-sided conversation spirals right behind her eyes. But Lexa nudges her nose forward, and catches her lips with Clarke’s own.

The kiss is nothing like the ones before. No desperation is in this, no bomb ticking down the seconds in the corner. Lexa moves against her lips slow and easy and when she rolls on top of her, Clarke sighs through her nose, content, lets her hands smooth over the near endless expanse of Lexa’s sides. Right up her waist and all the way to her hair, where she can tangle them inside.

“Okay,” Lexa exhales into her mouth, after Clarke has to pull away for air. _One_ of them has to worry about breathing. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Clarke pants, confused and still a little hazy. Lexa had _just_ been licking into her mouth and that was… not good for critical thinking skills.

“I want you. I want us.”

“Yeah?” Clarke says, but she’s grinning so much it ruins the kiss. Lexa chuckles almost soundlessly in response and trails a path down her jaw to her neck instead, letting the hint of teeth skim over in a tease that has her hips jolting upwards.

They stay lost with each other for a moment, nothing else existing around them.

But the exhaustion from all that went down with the mountain still lingers and makes itself known. Soon the tired kisses become too much, and it all ends with both of them on their sides with Lexa pressed up behind her, curled into her and those fingertips back to lazily drawing over her ribs.

But _even_ that becomes too much effort, and a lukewarm wrist just hangs limp over her hip, the circles from her fingers haphazard and tripping up the lines.

They sleep easy and at peace.

-

The room is pitch black when she wakes up.

This suffocating, paralysing fear seizes her entire body, and for one horrifying second she’s back in the cage. Nobody’s next to her and the room is so _dark_ and lonely and endless that she sits up in a rush. Yellow flashes through her eyes, to push the shadows away, her nose flaring to take in as much as she can at once—but that horrible second ends, and the desperate slam of her heart eases at realising she’s still in the old bedroom.

It wasn’t a dream. The _escape_ wasn’t a dream.

This is real.

Still, werewolves haven’t lived this long without a healthy dose of paranoia.

She glances down and holds up her arm, eyes the bite wound that’s only half-healed. Faint bruise marks still linger over the rest of her body. And she can _feel_ the damage, too. Even just lifting her arm drags like driving uphill in the wrong gear. But all this is _physical_ evidence, and so finally, she relaxes.

Her eyes drift over to the window. No pinprick of sunlight cuts through that inescapable gap in-between curtains. Sundown was a while ago.

Which means she’s gone around twenty-four hours without food.

Time to raid the town.

She only belatedly remembers to snag some clothes before trudging downstairs. Probably wouldn’t be best to flash the homeowners. More subconscious than anything, Clarke searches out for Lexa’s scent among the rest, following the trail until she’s led downstairs and into the living room where, of all things, she stumbles upon Lexa and Raffiel sitting together in the middle of a v _ery_ serious game of chess.

Clarke blinks, but before she can say anything to announce her presence, the dog that had been lazing at the feet of Seamus—who’s reading quietly in the corner, glasses on and tucked up below a reading lamp—jolts awake, catches just one look at her and sprints right past her up the stairs, barking in terror.

Everyone’s head snaps up simultaneously.

She twists back to glance at where the dog had legged it, metaphorical dust still floating in the air.

“I’m more a cat person, anyway.”

Raffiel grins wide at her. His buzzcut looks more pronounced, patches of grey where there hadn’t been before, but his willowy frame and gentle smile are the same. “Still making jokes, I see.”

Clarke shrugs, unrepentant.

“Come on,” Raffiel says, and pushes up to his feet with some minor struggle, waving off Lexa who sees this and instinctively makes like to move around the table, offer a hand. Clarke obeys easily and comes over to hug him, squeezing too tight. He smells exactly like he did years ago.

Raffiel pulls away with a quiet laugh.

“You’ve gotten taller,” he jokes, or at least she _thinks_ he jokes. It’s hard to tell with him when his voice is perpetually sincere.

“And you’re older,” Clarke throws back.

Raffiel scoffs, acting like he’s more offended than he truly is. He just shakes his head but moves back to fall into his chair again. She follows with, though Clarke drifts to Lexa’s side, Lexa greeting her with that private, soft smile that has her heart trip over itself like a moron in her chest. With no warning, Clarke just sits herself sideways across Lexa’s lap.

It earns her a pair of rolled eyes and some grumbling, but paradoxically, Lexa also loops her arm around Clarke’s waist to keep her balanced, make sure she won’t slip off.

“Are we winning?”

“ _We_?” Lexa says, quirking a brow up at her.

She looks seriously down at her. “Yes.”

This height difference is very nice. Usually _Clarke_ is the one who has to look up, because no matter how much it hurts; genetics don’t care a lot about your opinion.

Lexa must realise this as well, since the edge of her mouth ticks up, amused. “Raffiel is a formidable opponent.” Idly, her free hand pulls back from the chessboard and settles over Clarke’s knee, fingertips tracing loose circles. “We drew last. This is the rematch.”

Raffiel shrugs, and nods his head subtly over to Seamus still tucked up in the corner. “It’s been a while since I’ve had someone to _really_ play against. I do love him with all my heart, but Seamus is complete shit at this sort of thing.”

At hearing his name, Seamus finally pulls himself out from his book. “Whas’ that, love?”

“Nothing dear,” Raffiel says quickly. Seamus squints, before with great suspicion goes back to his book. The interaction has her and Lexa sharing a smile, but somehow, it’s only _now_ that Clarke seems to comprehend just how monumentally different Lexa looks here. Her clothes are soft and the rigid grip of her spine seems to have finally eased. And, here she sits, quietly playing chess with an old stranger when just yesterday she’d been massacring a prison and tearing out throats with her teeth.

Where do they go from here? Could _this_ be them one day? To live in a house full of memories trailing all up the walls and revel in the quiet solace of doing nothing together with the person you love? How do you build that? Even _entertain_ something so gentle when the way Clarke fell in love was with the undoubtable knowledge one of them would eventually have to kill the other.

Is this even something people like them are allowed to earn?

Lexa’s amused expression shifts, concern filtering through instead.

There’s an ocean filling up the bucket of her ribcage and Clarke looks away, purposefully clearing her throat and nodding to the chess board, waving a hand out to it.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Clarke says, and Lexa lingers, the intensity of her stare feeling like physical heat against the side of her face. She can even feel Raffiel’s eyes jumping between them, observing every step of this. And when it becomes blatantly obvious she’s not going to say another goddamn word, eventually Lexa does nothing more than sigh to herself and focus back onto the game.

But Clarke knows she’s not imagining it when Lexa’s grip on her seems to tighten, worsen. Her stomach still claws away within her, but she only shifts so her face settles into the crook of Lexa’s neck, nudging her nose against the soft skin. Breathes in and in. Falls inside. At some point her eyes close and while she doesn’t _sleep_ , exactly, she drifts somewhere in-between. The laxer her body becomes the tighter Lexa’s grip around her squeezes.

As thanks, Clarke offers a kiss that’s more her mouthing over Lexa’s neck.

Lexa tenses beneath her and it has Clarke smiling sleepily.

She watches the game through half-closed eyes. Seems like they’re both absurdly into it. They don’t talk, all their focus into total, silent warfare. Solely to be annoying, Clarke sometimes mumbles suggestions for a move and even reaches forward, points where to go. More than once Lexa swats her hands away.

But the hunger gets worse, and finally she can’t ignore the pangs anymore.

Lexa feels the movement. She pauses the game long enough to ease both her hands on Clarke’s sides and help her slide off safely. “There’s some steak in the fridge, I checked,” she tells her offhand, once Clarke’s on her own two feet. “Bottom row.”

“ _Only_ touch the bottom shelf,” Seamus grunts from his chair, not even looking up from his book.

She’s off like a shot.

-

“You can stay another day,” Seamus says to them a couple hours later, when it’s pushing on midnight and she and Lexa stand on the doorstep, about to head out. Raffiel nods his agreement from beside him, earnest written all over his face.

Lexa only dips her chin gratefully. “Thank you, but it’s best we continue moving.”

“Places to be, people to meet,” Clarke adds on.

Just before, Lexa had gotten off the phone with Anya while Clarke was busy eating everything she was allowed to pillage. Werewolves are a dietitian’s worst nightmare, see. Lexa had quietly excused herself and borrowed the landline, punching in the number by heart. She would’ve called sooner, but she hadn’t expected to sleep so long. The exhaustion had knocked them _both_ clean out.

It’d been a very amusing phone call. It didn’t last for long, either, but Lexa knows that’s only because Anya expects her home at once so she can relay it all in person. She’s both dreading it and not.

Still. Lexa’s fingers had been on the verge of shaking when she’d keyed in the number, and then held the phone up to her ear, didn’t breathe, didn’t move, nothing. The line rang and rang. And ended. Blinking, Lexa glanced down to the device, bewildered, before with a frown began retyping the number but slower this time, as if spacing it out made a difference.

No answer.

Fear coiled up in her throat. By the frantic third call, dizzy relief bowled her over at hearing the painfully familiar voice snap through the line: “I have no idea _how_ you got this number, but understand that if you call me _one more_ fucking time, I will hunt you down, and that is a promise.”

Lexa smiled so wide her cheeks hurt. “Please. You have the worst nose of anyone I’ve ever met.”

Silence. Nothing but the line crackling.

It went on for so long that Lexa briefly thought she’d hung up.

“Say that again,” Anya said, deathly quiet.

Lexa wasn’t crying. But, she _knew_ that Anya could hear it next, that wet shake in her throat. “I am the night and the night is my blood.”

It’s an old phrase. The specific line of code she’d been taught by Anya centuries ago when she was still learning the ropes of being undead. It’s probably the best passcode you would ever want to hear from your loved ones, was devised in their kind’s darkest hours, when they were all dropping left and right. There’re thousands of letters throughout covert history littered with that exact phrase.

It means one thing:

_I live._

And Anya doesn’t cry, either. But Lexa can hear it in her voice.

“Where are you?”

Lexa glanced around the strangers’ house Clarke had led her to. In the kitchen, the steaks were done frying. She only knew this because she heard Clarke swear from attempting to pick up the steak, no doubt with her bare hands, too impatient to let it cool down and too stubborn to use a spatula.

“Have you ever heard of Tondc?” Lexa said. “Small suburbia town.”

Anya didn’t answer immediately, as if she was trying to gather her voice. Lexa understood the feeling. “I don’t… know of it, no. When will you…” she trailed off, like even just _saying_ this was too much, couldn’t be real. “When will you be home?”

Lexa swallowed thickly. “Soon.” A heavy, shaky exhale. “ _Soon,_ Ahn. I just… need to steal a car first.”

Anya laughed, and for her sake Lexa didn’t mention that it sounded like a building caving inwards.

“Again, thank you once more for all you’ve done,” Lexa says to the pair that’d given them sanctuary.

“Well,” Seamus starts, but he sounds more nervous than anything, the usual gruff of his voice suddenly unsure. “You two best be careful.”

Clarke mimes crossing her heart.

All four of them linger, saying the last of their goodbyes before finally Raffiel has to loop his arm around Seamus’ waist and gently guide him back indoors.

The door shuts and the old married couple disappears inside.

“I’ll miss their dog,” Lexa says in the sudden quiet.

“Don’t even start.”

They search the streets for a while. Tonight, the temperature’s dropped even further, though, and it’s an easy guess snow will catch up to them soon. Nothing’s falling yet, but Lexa notices how Clarke always keeps _some_ part of them touching, whether it’s her whole arm pressed up against Lexa’s own or the tight hold of woven fingers.

Then again, maybe the cold has nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s more about making up for weeks and weeks of never being able to touch at all.

Either way: it means Lexa feels it when every muscle in Clarke’s body locks up.

She halts to a jerky stop, abrupt enough that Lexa overtakes her a few steps before realising. She frowns, easing back to her side and about to ask her what’s wrong—but Clarke’s not paying her the least bit of attention. Her eyes are rapidly scanning their surroundings, but the _bigger_ tipoff is seeing how her nostrils flare, over and over, like there’s something she’s trying to dig up from the air.

Even her mouth parts open, though Lexa thinks the action is unconscious. The way she uses the roof of her mouth to scent like the wolf does.

Whatever it is, Clarke must find it.

She takes off. Her hand slips limp from her grip, and Lexa just has to exhale through her nose and blindly follow along. Clarke moves fast, not _running_ but something a few steps behind, winding deeper and further into the suburbs until she passes one house, and then freezes, retraces her steps back to it. The trail of _whatever_ she was following leads here. To this house.

Lexa walks up from behind her, looks around. Nothing sticks out. It looks like any other white-picket dream around here. A kid’s soccer net in the front yard, a ball still rolled inside. A couple of garden beds. Nice simple fence, the walls painted all even and with minimal cracks. On the bottom storey, one window is even lit up, the curtains _just_ lax enough the TV is visible from within, the pale glow fuzzing the outline of someone’s head on the couch.

Certainly nothing that explains the way Clarke is staring down the house like she’s about to burn the entire thing down to ashes.

Lexa waits.

“I can smell him,” Clarke says after an age. Her eyes don’t shift off the window to the living room.

Lexa considers this before blinking slow in understanding. “This is Emerson’s house, isn’t it?”

No response.

Inside, someone laughs from a joke onscreen. The laughter is feminine, light.

“I think that’s his wife,” Clarke whispers, like none of this is real. 

Lexa’s eyes drift to the kid’s sports gear still spread out across the lawn. “What do you want to do?”

She keeps the question as neutral as possible, wanting to see how far Clarke will take this.

Clarke continues eyeing down the window. Lexa turns her head, settling her gaze on her and noting how Clarke’s fingers are spreading out dangerously, her whole body vibrating with tension, and even through clenched teeth Lexa can _hear_ it—that low, grinding sound spurring deep from within her chest. From the wolf trying to claw its way up her throat.

But she doesn’t move.

“Do you think they even know what he did? What he was involved with?”

“I don’t know,” Lexa says honestly. Chances leant more towards negative, though. Anything involving _that_ much money would want kept as under wraps as possible.

Slowly—so, so slowly—Clarke tears her eyes off and looks at her. “I could do it.”

Lexa nods. “You could.”

“I could go in there. Make it hurt. There would be no fucking trace of him. I could make him _nothing_.”

Lexa holds her stare.

But Clarke exhales everything in her lungs all at once, like it’s not just air she’s losing. “I could,” she says, and then she turns around, and they walk away.

The film keeps playing inside, oblivious.

-

In all fairness, after driving for a solid five hours and _finally_ pulling up into the stretched out neighbourhood Lexa could walk with her eyes closed, easing the old stolen Ford pickup into the deserted driveway—well, she _tries_ to show Clarke around the proper way.

She leads them up the pathway and keeps one hand guiding on the small of her back, as Clarke’s looking nowhere near her feet but to the _mansion_ laid out in front of them. It’s old and sprawling and is probably intimidating the hell out of her if the way she can’t stop gaping means anything, but the closer they get, the more Lexa feels such a deep, intense relief at just finally, finally making it home. 

After she unearths the spare key from its hidden spot, stashed below a particular plank of wood in the porch, and _then_ sheltered further inside a small safe made entirely of silver that she has to tap the code in for, she twists the front door unlock, and leads them in. Even Lexa can smell the dust and disuse. No one’s lived here for months.

See, Lexa tries to give a tour. Because that seems like the polite, right thing to do.

They only make it through three rooms. Those being: the entryway, the stairs, and the master bedroom.

Because that last one, Clarke is suddenly pushing her down onto a king-sized bed, tangling her fists into the bottom of Lexa’s shirt, breathing hard into her mouth and burning anything left between them like she’s waited too long.

The important thing is, Lexa tried.

-

“I was going to show you the house,” Lexa says weakly, with Clarke boneless on top of her and tucked up below her chin.

“We’re breaking it in,” Clarke sighs into Lexa’s chest, and she knows full well her girlfriend has no plans whatsoever of moving soon. Even now she can hear the way Clarke’s pounding heart is slowing, slowing, the soft breathing against Lexa’s throat weakening with every second.

She glances down to the deadweight sprawled over her and reaches up, combing her fingers through Clarke’s hair and smiling when she nuzzles further into her in response, this quiet, pleasant rumble the loudest sound in the room. Morning sunlight crawls in through the window and drowns them both. And there’s no beating heart left in her, sure, but the sight of the sun glowing all over her hair so it shines like gold, well.

Lexa doesn’t really know how to breathe in the face of that.

The all-encompassing warmth must register to her too, because Clarke indulges in the monumental effort to roll her head along Lexa’s shoulder so she can look up at her, meet her gaze. Lexa doesn’t remove her hand from where it’s still carding through blond hair, just watches the blue of her eyes burn in the dawnlight.

“The sun,” Clarke says, like she’s only now realising the imminent threat about to break in through the door.

“This is my house,” Lexa assures, and it feels _so good_ to say that again. “The windows have magic in them. It won’t hurt me here.”

Curiously, Clarke’s first instinct is to lift her head enough to glance over to the windows, and then inhale deeply, as if to suss out the truth for herself.

“What does it smell like?” Lexa asks suddenly.

She looks back to her, tilting her head in a distinctly canine gesture. Lexa forces herself not to react to it. “What does?”

“Magic.”

Clarke considers this. The seconds drag on sluggish and lazy and after some indiscernible amount of time later, she even lets her head fall back down into Lexa’s chest. When she hums before answering, Lexa can feel the sound spread the whole way through her ribs like hot water.

“I don’t really know.” Fingertips trail from her side up to the middle of her chest, teases right up Lexa’s neck until she’s tipping her chin back only for the finger to keep moving down, drifting this way and that. No purpose, no finish line. “It’s… too much, I think. Like there’s too much inside it to name.”

She trails off from here, unsure where else to go.

Her hand keeps tracing over nothing, but when it glides over the plane of Lexa’s stomach, pushes _low_ enough that Lexa’s eyes snap down and track to it—those fingers hesitate, millimetres from crossing that line, before pulling all the way back up to safer grounds.

“What do I smell like?”

“Like you.”

“Does it truly bring you joy to annoy me so?”

“More than you will ever know,” Clarke says gravely.

Lexa makes a show of trying to push Clarke off her, but when she pushes at her shoulders Clarke merely laughs and pushes _back_ , her hands shooting out and bracketing Lexa’s head, setting her weight down to prevent the efforts all she can. It forces new tactics to be considered, and she thinks it over barely a second before wrapping her hand around the back of Clarke’s neck, and pulling her down to kiss her.

There’s no fight for this. Slowly, inch by inch, the previous tense and immovable muscle of Clarke’s shoulders slackens. And when she edges away for air, nudging against Lexa’s nose and slanting her head before leaning in again—Lexa grabs those shoulders with no warning, flips them over.

“You cheating bastard,” Clarke pants, but her pupils are blown to hell and her eyes are still stuck firmly to Lexa’s mouth. She doesn’t even let Lexa reply before surging up once more.

They lose track of time after that. Almost comically, it really is only once their breathing has come back down and Lexa has crawled the way back up Clarke’s body, ready to sleep the day away—of course, _that_ is when the doorbell rings.

“It’s fine,” Lexa exhales, _feeling_ how Clarke tenses beneath her. “Ignore it.”

Her eyes drift to the bedroom door first before nodding. “Okay.”

Hands skirt up her sides and yank her down and over, Lexa laughing even as Clarke very happily curls up behind Lexa’s back, looping a loose arm around her waist. “Why can’t I hold you?” Lexa mutters, but Clarke merely kisses her shoulder and nuzzles into the back of Lexa’s neck, breathes in deep and content.

It stalls her despite everything. What _does_ she smell like? Maybe Clarke hadn’t even been lying. It really was just uniquely _her_ and nothing more, nothing less. Or maybe Clarke just enjoys fucking with her. Yeah, it’s probably that.

Lexa closes her eyes and focuses all her hearing onto Clarke’s heartbeat, the slow drag of breathing.

She did this a lot back in the mountain. Shamefully, but irresistibly. It had been one of those things she knew there was no fighting for. There was no doubt that if it came down to it, they could be swept up in a sea of thousands and Lexa could still wade the way through, find her way back to her just by searching for the particular rhythm of her pulse. 

Even monsters are too human in the end. It’s how it always goes.

The doorbell rings again.

Clarke doesn’t tense this time. Her breathing doesn’t so much as falter. Maybe they’d gone a little overboard. Lexa’s not even sure she can feel her legs.

A few minutes of blissful, depthless silence.

And then the doorbell. This time with a fist smacking right into the door that is masquerading as a knock, but _actually_ is a punch, and follows with a furious voice that rings the whole journey through the house and all the way up to the second floor.

“Lexa, the spare key is missing, so I will assume you’ve made it back. And if you don’t open this door in the next five _fucking_ seconds, I will assume you are not, in fact, Lexa kom Trikru, and I will come into this house and I will kill you my goddamn self. And, by the way! It’s _daylight_ hours, dickhead!”

Lexa’s eyes blink open, settle on the limp curled around her stomach. Feels the warm weight of Clarke pressed up all against her back. And she thinks about Anya burning alive solely because she didn’t get out of bed with a naked woman.

So she sighs and rolls out from Clarke’s hold, ignoring the twinge in her chest when Clarke doesn’t wake but still, in her sleep, reaches for her anyway, and her nose twitches, like it’ll lead her back to her.

No, she can’t let Anya burn to death over gay sex.

Right?

The knocking gets more and more frantic, and Lexa stumbles in through the pair of jeans snatched off the floor and snags the first shirt she can find from her dusty closet—and her legs only give out once, which Lexa is endlessly grateful Clarke isn’t conscious enough to see—only to freeze right as she makes the doorknob.

She wastes a second to double back for the ensuite bathroom, quickly washes her hands, and _then_ races down the stairs and flings the door open before Anya can break the poor thing down.

“ _In,_ ” Lexa snaps, doesn’t bother acknowledging the way Anya’s face pales from where she’s covered her head over with a blanket, eyes wide and mouth gaping

“You’re—You’re—”

Lexa rolls her eyes and grabs Anya herself.

She yanks her in by the shirt collar, kicks the door shut behind her so the sunlight can’t touch her anymore. But Anya still _isn’t_ moving, frozen in place. It’s so bad that Lexa has to reach up and pull the scruffy blanket off her, hanging it up on the nearby coat rack cautiously as if Anya will jump out at her any second. Traces of smoke leech up into the air, crawl up from the spots of soot riddled through the material.

A full minute passes and Anya won’t stop staring at her.

Her hands keep twitching at her side, like she _wants_ to touch her but also could never dare risk it. Not dare the chance her hand might just fall through.

“How long has it been?” Lexa asks, struggling to work through the weight in her throat.

Anya blinks harshly at her. “Six months,” she answers, finally. It seems as if now that she’s braved the first words, the rest come easier. “You’ve been gone six months.”

It feels like so much longer than that.

“Shit,” Lexa exhales, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

Anya cracks a rare smile for this, though. “Yeah, _shit_.”

For an awkward second, they both hover there—this is the textbook example moment for when to hug your loved ones—but neither of them have ever been good for that, and so Anya’s face crashes with obvious relief when Lexa just blurts, “Do you want a drink?”

“You remember where they are?” Anya throws at her. It’s almost casual, except there’s no mistaking how Anya still hasn’t stopped staring at her like she’s a miracle.

Lexa glares at her as she guides them down the entryway. “Not unless someone moved them. Which, if _anyone_ but you and Gustus have, I want the names for.”

“No one’s touched your overactive organisation system, no.”

Lexa turns her face away with a scoff, keeps moving forward.

It’s more so Anya can’t see the burning behind her eyes, though.

How did she _miss_ getting insulted?

Anya sighs in frustration behind her. “Hey, no, stop.”

Lexa does. Not a heartbeat later and Anya does the unthinkable, the unforgivable.

She hugs her.

It doesn’t last that long, and afterwards Anya pushes her away like she’s sick with something, storms past her head down and scowling the whole way, furious at herself. And despite this, Lexa watches the retreat with her eyes glued to her sire’s back, swallowing down the urge to cry. 

Instinctively, her hearing zeros in on the languid heartbeat one floor above.

-

The good news is: no civil wars broke out.

Which is something Lexa is intensely relieved over, as that had been her biggest fear in her absence. The Coalition had not been formed with ease, and more than that, had never once been tested without her explicit presence. Negotiating and writing up peace treaties had been a whole other type of war, but at least _that_ had her there in the room, able to preside over every second.

Before the mountain took her, she’d been mostly sure it would hold. Mostly. Tensions between the clans were at the lowest they’d ever been, and it was only really the younger vampires that were pushing boundaries, testing limits. The eldest were _there_ for the civil wars, see—for all those generations on generations of constant death. They were there when the population was dropping low enough to the threat of extinction.

Lexa could trust nobody in her age bracket and above would make a go for anything. The _one_ outlier to this would be Nia—because every rule has an exception, nothing ever functions in absolutes—but Nia’s son, Roan, he’d always been Lexa’s ally, and he wouldn’t let his mother fly off the rails, not if he could stop it.

The _younger_ vampires, though.

“No one made a go during the power vacuum?” Lexa asks doubtfully. They’ve now moved their talking to the living room, the fireplace crackling softly. It’s more for the heat of it. This room in particular is a mess of relics and memories. There’s more than one painting strung up along the walls, and none of them match the same century. Some are older than _Lexa_ herself, a gift from elder vampires, but the majority—they’re all hers, _her_ collection.

A massive bookcase sits up in the corner, packed with titles that run wild with varying topics that have nothing to do with each other. In the middle row, there’s even a glass case, locked and sealed air-tight, and inside is a scroll so old, so frail and ancient it would no doubt crumble to dust in your hands, if you dared to roll it open.

That scroll is the last concrete reminder she has left of her village.

It’s sort of legible, uses the archaic form of Old English.

And, funny enough, all it is, is the missive passed to them days before Lexa had died. The letter from the soldiers, their warning that they had two choices: submit or die. Blood spots still dampen the edges, eating up the bottom end of the page from where it had been folded in half all those centuries ago, when Lexa was dying there in the field and that notice crumpled over itself in her pocket, the last thing to ever tie her back there.

Gustus thinks it’s morbid to keep it. Anya was the one who suggested immortalising it.

The rest of the room is about the same. Mementoes pocketed throughout history, all that Lexa had earned and forged. Because while vampires can’t be remembered by the outside, that doesn’t mean _they_ ’re forbidden to remember themselves, to build their own history secretly, in what only matters and is significant to them.

It’s the one human instinct none of them have ever been able to shake off.

Anya makes a face, grimacing. “No, I mean that there were no _official_ fights. None of the covens declared anything outright. But… well, you were gone. And some tried to take advantage of that.”

“Not surprising,” Lexa murmurs, _meaning_ it, though frowning nonetheless. “I assume Nia tried something?”

“Not directly. Not like she’ll ever get her hands dirty if someone else will do the job for her.”

Lexa runs through all the possible names in her head, but only one sticks out. “Ontari? Her new sire?”

“Dead now,” Anya says, holding her eyes so she understands the unsaid.

Lexa looks away, clenches her jaw.

“It had to be done.”

“Is there anything else that I must know before I go back?”

Anya doesn’t argue the brush off. They’ve known each other too long. “No, I believe that is everything essential. We can talk about the minor details later. _Now_ I want to hear about the mountain. After a drink, though,” she adds, like an afterthought. “I brought some bags with me. I assumed you would need some.”

“I’m good,” Lexa says, and _prays_ so goddamn bad that her voice betrays nothing.

But praying did nothing then and it does nothing now. And so Anya just stares at her. And stares. “You’re good,” she repeats, but it drips with doubt, her left eyebrow arched high.

Damn. Anybody who knows Anya knows it’s the _left_ eyebrow you’ve got to worry about. That’s the blood-in-the-water eyebrow. The when-was-the-last-time-you-updated-your-will eyebrow.

And maybe six months trapped in the company of nobody has wrecked her instincts somewhat, because Anya seems to see right through her.

Her eyes unfocus briefly, drifting aside but seeing nothing. It’s because she’s not seeing with her _eyes_. She’s looking with her hearing, the telltale tilt of her head like the swing of the executioner’s axe, dooming her to no escape. Just a second later and Anya’s eyes snap back to hers.

“You _brought_ someone here with you?”

“Uh.”

“To feed?” Anya says, and relaxes at the idea, which while a completely reasonable assumption ignites something in Lexa that pisses her off to an absurd degree. 

“No.”

“What?”

Of course, this is when Clarke decides to wake up. Because fuck everything, that’s why.

And there’s nothing more than Lexa can do than watch in muted horror as Clarke shuffles her way down the stairs, and appears in the archway in _Lexa’s_ flannel shirt she’d obviously stolen from her wardrobe, and even worse: no pants. At least she’s wearing underwear. Casual as anything, Clarke makes like to explore the house, curiously glancing through each doorway, but at seeing them in the living room grins as if this is a totally normal situation.

Anya glances rapidly between Lexa and her, putting all the dots together rapid fast and Lexa just wants to go back to fucking bed. Things were so much nicer then. She never should’ve gotten up, Lexa knows that now with perfect clarity.

“Who are you?” Clarke says to Anya. Nothing malicious in her voice, just genuine curiosity. Her chest tightens at realising it’s because of seeing what _Clarke_ had looked for first after stepping into the room.

Because she didn’t look to the stranger first, but to Lexa. To Lexa’s _reaction_ to the stranger and went from there. And since she and Anya are nonchalantly sat on the leather couch together, clearly she’d lodged this, accepted there was no threat here.

“Who am _I_?” Anya snaps back.

“That is indeed what I asked,” Clarke says easily. When Anya continues staring at her in disbelief, she turns her sights for the room around her, whistles impressively.

“Damn, this probably cost more than everything I’ve ever owned,” she mutters, more to herself as she reaches for a vase with ancient inscriptions carved into it only to pause millimetres before contact, pulls back like she doesn’t trust herself enough.

Lexa restrains the impulse to bang her head into the nearest wall. “Clarke, can you _please_ put some pants on, and then we can talk?”

Clarkes blinks and glances down like she’s only just realising she’s not wearing any pants. “Oh, right. Yeah, sure. Whatever. You sure weren’t complaining this morning but _sure_ , I’ll go,” she holds up her fingers in mocking air quotes, “‘put on some pants’.” Scowling, she turns back for stairs, muttering under her breath. “And to think we call this democracy.”

Just when Lexa thinks she’s safe, Clarke pops her back in the doorway at the last second.

“Hey. You’re Anya, right?”

Anya still looks like she’s wondering if someone drugged her without her knowledge, but slowly—she nods.

Clarke smiles to herself, satisfied. “Knew it.” 

They watch her leave this time for good and Lexa holds off on meeting Anya’s burning stare until it becomes unavoidable. “A _werewolf_?” Anya says lowly once Lexa finally bites the bullet.

“Is that a problem?” Lexa asks, and weighs her words very, very carefully.

But Anya looks more curious than disgusted. “No. But you just got out from the mountain, and not one day later… you’re already taking someone home? A _werewolf_ home?”

“She was in the mountain too,” Lexa admits.

This seems to interest her a whole lot more. Her head even jerks around, like despite the fact Clarke is nowhere in sight the truth will still show itself, somehow. “So you left _together_ , then?”

Lexa doesn’t answer this. That left eyebrow is up and spelling out her doom, the slow smirk spreading telling her full well she’s already revealed too much. When Lexa remains resolutely silent, Anya only smirks wider, but gets off the couch, heads for the kitchen.

This confuses her, though.

“There’s no blood in there, Ahn. I just got back.”

Anya slows, though doesn’t turn around. “I kept it stocked.”

Her brow furrows in. “Why would…”

The words trail off as the realisation hits, and Anya practically sprints from the room in response, refusing to see the pained understanding on Lexa’s face.

Lexa falls back into the silence, swallows heavily.

Anya had come by the house regularly in her absence. Had brought bags with her, stacked them with care inside the fridge, simply for the off-chance—that if Lexa survived and turned up unannounced, there it would be. Already waiting for her.

“Shit,” Lexa sighs, again.

“What is?”

It’s utterly shameful for a voice to surprise a _vampire_. Her hearing should’ve picked up the distinctive shuffle of Clarke’s steps long before, but Lexa jumps anyway, whips around to face her girlfriend who’s now standing as close as she can to her behind the couch, an amused brow raised high. Well, not _standing_ , exactly. More like knelt behind the couch, her arms crossed flat along the back of it, her chin resting over her wrists.

It puts their faces right next to one another’s.

“Are you wearing pants now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Lexa shoots her an unimpressed look. “I _know_ you, Clarke. I know you’ve got good hearing _and_ an even better nose. You knew I wasn’t alone.”

“I thrive off chaos,” Clarke says, in the deepest voice possible, twisting her face so it’s grizzly, war-torn. Lexa just shakes her head in fond exasperation. It only seems to delight her further.

“How long have you been awake?” she asks, though Clarke seems to hear the hidden question inside this: _how much did you listen to?_

Clarke shrugs. “Only a few minutes. You weren’t with me. Went to go find you.”

Lexa softens. The lines in Clarke’s face do too, smoothing into a small smile, and Lexa doesn’t resist the urge to close the tiny gap between them to capture her lips for a bit. It’s easy and gentle and she draws back a moment or so after, though her eyes remain closed.

“Are you hungry?”

“I’m a werewolf.”

“You are?”

Clarke leans in, bites Lexa’s lip like a warning.

Unlike before, this time she _does_ hear the approach of footsteps. Lexa pulls herself up fully so she’s no longer slouching over the sofa frame—but Clarke makes a noise for this, following the movement with mournful eyes.

No. Puppy dog eyes.

Lexa sighs to herself and slumps back into the couch, putting them close again.

Much to her horror, she looks up only to find that Anya had caught every step of this interaction. There’s no chance she’ll ever let this go.

Goddamnit.

But a soft hand nudges where hers lies across the couch, tugs at her fingers until _her_ hand nudges back too, and Clarke can loosely thread through the gaps, offers this gentle kiss to her knuckles.

Lexa squeezes the hand back.

-

The transition isn’t _seamless_ by any means, but it does take Clarke back the disturbing ease they fall into pattern with each other. They’d met in a place where survival came first before anything—and, internally, Clarke had worried that maybe it’d been more the situation they were in than who they were that had led them to each other. That if there was no danger, no threat, no _kiss me before the world ends_ , they’d simply break apart, would never fit together.

And no, it’s not seamless.

But night after night they go back to the same bed and morning by morning they wake up in that same one too.

Lexa tends to leave sometime during the night, though. Especially near the end of that first week together, Clarke wakes up in the middle of night, desperate for the bathroom, only to stumble out of bed to see Lexa sat in the large window alcove with her knees up to her chest and staring out into the midnight sky. So Clarke had gone to the bathroom, but on the way back, instead of collapsing straight into bed, had made a detour for her.

No words were spoken, but Lexa glanced to her, once, watching Clarke settle in on the opposite side of the alcove.

After a while, Lexa looked back out through the window again. Clarke lingered, noting the lines in Lexa’s face, the ones she hadn’t seen since the mountain. Something hung in the air, though she only tracked her gaze to the window too. The view was gorgeous, to be fair. Brick and grass backed up by woods. A week wasn’t near enough time to explore it fully and it was one of the things Clarke looked forward to most. She would comb every one inch one day, know every corner. That was a promise.

The moon was almost full tonight. It was only a few days off. So close, the backlight lit up the forest, made the leaves all glisten like ghosts. Both haunting and beautiful.

“What’s keeping you?” Clarke finally asked, her voice soft.

“I must return officially to the covens tomorrow night.”

Clarke hummed. “You’re worried?”

“Always,” Lexa said, no joke in her voice.

Neither spoke for a beat. The wind was picking up outside. You could see it bash against the trees, hear it in the groan of the walls.

“Do you want me to go with you? I can bite anyone who pisses you off.”

The corner of Lexa’s mouth ticked up, half-smothered like she’d _wanted_ to hold it back but failed. “That’s very kind of you. But I best think it’s safer to let them handle one piece of news at a time.”

“Are you worried for your safety?”

Maybe Lexa picked up the notes of fear, because this time she turned her head, met her eyes. “It’s unlikely. No clans acted out during my leave. Anya said there were minor attempts, but nothing that developed to a dangerous degree. In all-likelihood, my return will simply mean a _lot_ of paperwork for me.”

“Vampires care about paperwork?” Clarke said, unable to bite down her grin. “ _Please_ tell me it’s written in blood.”

Lexa lightly kicked Clarke’s leg where it was outstretched near hers. “No, Clarke.” A long pause. “Well, most of them aren’t.”

“Come back to bed with me,” she begged, and Lexa hesitated briefly before obeying and letting Clarke tug her back down into the sheets.

That had been two weeks ago. And much to her secret relief, Lexa had come back the morning after that reunion meeting with no scratches on her and the weight in her shoulders significantly lessened. She didn’t come back alone, either, but with Anya and Gustus and even _Lincoln_.

Octavia wasn’t with him. But after a quiet question of that, he’d given the same answer Lexa had about her: one step at a time.

Up until this point she’d never met Gustus in person before, and it’d been mildly terrifying introducing herself to Lexa’s vampiric adoptive father. Because _of course_ her girlfriend’s dad isn’t just built like an honest bear; he just _has_ to be undead on top of that. Clarke had to genuinely tip her fucking head back to look at him. She’d fought harpies and goddamn _minotaurs_ and felt less scared.

But as shit scared as she was, meeting him suddenly made a whole lot of things about Lexa make sense. Because the more time she spent with him, and the more they both slowly, cautiously let their guard down inch by inch upon realising both parties had Lexa’s best interests at heart—it was almost comical, really. How similar they are.

Lexa is the same. Terrifying and imposing from a distance, but closer you got, the more their true self was revealed. Their humanity.

He’s also one of the few people who finds her shit jokes funny.

Whether a four hundred-year-old vampire dad finds your jokes funny is a _good_ thing, though, is still on the table.

And now, here she and Lexa sit in their car, a little down the street from where her mother’s house is. A load of other cars back up along the street too, the house already lit up and voices laughing and chatting inside, some faint music singing underneath it all. They’ve been sitting in this car for a solid ten minutes. Well, _Lexa_ has been sitting and eyeing the house up ahead like it’s a bomb waiting to go off, while Clarke keeps making goes to open the door only to stop when Lexa doesn’t reciprocate the movement.

“It’s going to be fine,” Clarke says for the millionth time.

Lexa swallows for the millionth time. “It’s different, Clarke. Your kind and mine…”

“They don’t care. They never have.”

“Werewolves stick together,” Lexa says cautiously, but Clarke’s eyes snap to hers for this.

“So you think that means we inherently hate outsiders?”

Lexa winces, clearly recognising the poor choice in words. “No, no, of course not. I just.” She closes her eyes, tipping head back with a forceful sigh. “I’m just—I’m nervous, okay? Vampires stick together too. And I don’t… I don’t want to be the cause of anything, of any rift that might… open up between you and them. Because of me.”

Clarke relaxes. She thinks it over, before just twisting her seat and reaching across the dashboard, cupping Lexa’s cheeks, turning it to face hers. “Listen to me,” she whispers, quiet but firm. “I do not care what my family thinks. And if one of them is stupid enough to provoke _some_ sort of rift over us, then I consider that a win, because now I know where they fucking stand. It’s you and me, alright? And I—”

She cuts herself off violently, feels her heart kick up in her chest over what she’d almost admitted.

No. This is not the time.

“And I need you. I need you with me when I go in there, because I can’t do this alone.”

“You’re scared?” Lexa whispers back, and Clarke lets out a stressed laugh, letting her forehead tip into Lexa’s.

“God, yeah. When I called my mom yesterday using your phone—you should have heard her when she picked up. She sounded so _relieved_ , like she was crying. I think she knows I’d been in deep shit. As in, _I thought you were dead_ deep shit.”

Even with her eyes closed, the smile in Lexa’s voice is obvious. “You could be reading into it.”

“I know my mother. And I know her voice. When she’s scared.” What she doesn’t mention is her dad, that she remembers _exactly_ how her voice had sounded that day at school. How that same tremor had been in Abby’s voice when Clarke had called. “So you need to come with me, because now that my mom knows I’m not, in fact, dead, she’s going to fucking kill me for scaring her like that.”

“That seems counterproductive.”

“We had sex in a dream before we kissed in real-life.”

“That’s not relevant to this conversation.”

Clarke laughs and offers a kiss just to shut her up, but this time—Lexa steps out with her from the car.

-

They walk up the short length to the house.

As they close the distance, though, the first person to see them isn’t anyone from _inside_. But the one leaning against the fence in the front, a joint end glowing red in the dark, their head tipped back, mist drifting up through their lips. It’s not someone Clarke immediately recognises, and it takes until she and Lexa are all the way up to the fence before the person registers their presence.

This is the biggest tip-off they’re not supernatural.

They glance over, long, long black hair that runs almost the whole way down their back swaying with the movement. “Hey. It’s Clarke, right?”

Now that she’s close enough she can smell it—that underneath the smoke, there’s a more familiar scent from one of her cousins smothered over theirs, _with_ theirs. “And I’m guessing you’re Danny's partner, right?”

Their eyes widen, and then they laugh, the sound deep and husky. “Shit, I always forget how good your noses are.” They take one last drag to finish the joint before flicking it to the pavement, stabs it with their boot. “Don’t think I’ve got any clue who _you_ are, though,” they say to Lexa, and offer out their hand. “I’m Charlie.”

She hesitates for a fraction of a heartbeat before taking it. “Lexa.”

“You took my hand,” Charlie says. Lexa inclines her head, but they only grin back, shrug to themselves. “Don’t tell Danny you caught me out here.”

“You know she’ll smell it on you, right?” Clarke counters, amused.

“Exactly. I want another five minutes of blissful ignorance. No need to give her a head start.”

She shakes her head and reaches down for Lexa’s hand, tugs her forward up the front pathway. Charlie watches them go with a lazy wave. But when they spin back around and lean their neck back, they just relax beneath the night around them, let it sigh and breathe.

“See? That wasn’t so bad,” Clarke teases her, leaning close to Lexa’s ear. “They didn’t even snarl at you.”

“They’re human. That doesn’t count.”

“You know, if you keep making rules for yourself, you’ll never win.”

“There might be an inkling of truth to that,” Lexa admits.

The front door is unlocked. Jokes aside, though, Clarke does make a point to move around so she’s directly in front of her girlfriend, acting like a wall between them and the chaos inside. Lexa raises her brow, but politely waits her out for whatever it is she’s about to do.

“Before we go in, I want to say something. If you seriously do feel overwhelmed or anything, we can bail. Like, I didn’t even ask for this… welcome back celebration, or whatever. I just called my mom and then she called my uncle and then it just spiralled from there.” She lets out a nervous laugh, shrugging a shoulder. “We just kinda get a bit overexcited when we find out someone’s not dead.”

“You stick together,” Lexa says, though her voice is warm and endeared this time.

“Exactly. And I stick with you.”

Lexa doesn’t _blush_ , but her eyes avert to the side, this tiny smile on her lips. “Okay,” she mumbles at last.

Her heart flutters pleasantly. “Okay,” Clarke echoes through a wide smile.

Lexa pushes her gently for that. It doesn’t really work since they’re still holding her hands, so she sways forward with her, and since it’s _Clarke_ she makes a show of it, stumbling back like it’s a fatal blow, falling into the door and clutching at her side in melodramatic agony.

But the front door is unlocked. And she’d forgotten this in the heat in of the moment, the joke far too important over something stupid like _physics._

The realisation hits her with that horrible swoop in her stomach as that weight she’d expected to hold her up _is not there_ , and then they’re both falling, crashing into the carpeted floor in a mess of limbs.

A whirlwind of sensations happens simultaneously: a sharp elbow bangs into her side, an even _worse_ pain erupts at the back of her head, and any trace of the air gets knocked from her lungs from Lexa slamming right on top of her. All at once, the conversation from inside cuts out at the loud _bang_ and thud, every eye in the room whipping to their direction.

When the world stops spinning—she’d hit the floor head first, which is always fun—Clarke just very, very slowly tips her head back to meet the wide stare of everyone.

“Um. Guess who’s not dead?”

Most of them crack a smile, a few even laughing and turning away, this sort of entrance from her being nothing out the usual. It’s vaguely insulting, but when Lexa tries scrambling off her Clarke’s hands shoot up on autopilot, keep her close.

“Take me with you,” Clarke begs, like she’s about to be forever abandoned.

Lexa glares at her. Though, she shifts back onto her knees, clearly embarrassed but offering a hand out for Clarke nonetheless to grab on to. Of course, she reaches for it only for a chorus of shouts and cheers to erupt behind them—and _that’s_ the only warning she has before a rack of lethal teeth close around her shoulder and rip her back.

But there’s no real pressure, the teeth not even breaking into skin.

The werewolf drags her a solid few metres across the floor before Clarke’s hands surge up and fist the nearest purchase of fur she can find, and _pull_ with her all strength, sending the thing falling over her. “You fucking shit head,” Clarke spits to the werewolf, but she’s grinning, and the wolf—Danny, she realises—backs away with her tongue hanging out in a huge doggy grin, tail wagging like crazy.

“Hey! What did I say about shifting in the house, huh? _Outside_ only.”

That smile wipes in an instant. Danny lowers her head, whines like an apology.

Clarke goes very still.

She’s heard that reprimanding tone more than her own name.

And maybe she senses her panic, somehow, because all of a sudden Lexa is in front of her and crouching down, gently sliding her hands around Clarke’s sides and easing her up to her feet. Clarke doesn’t turn around at first, miraculously hoping she’s not been spotted—but like always, she turns around and finds that all her hopes and dreams are futile.

It’s been a while since the last she saw her mother. The last time was for Unity Day last year, and they hadn’t even talked. This was mostly Clarke’s fault, though. She’d crept in on four legs and remained that way. These days it felt like the two of them could barely stand in a room together for two minutes without some sort of argument erupting.

But the blinding relief on Abby’s face is unmistakable.

Clarke opens her mouth and then closes it, swallows in the thick silence.

Featherlight, a familiar hand slides up her back underneath her shirt. Not far, only about to the wrist, but the pressure is _real_ and solid and cool and she doesn’t hesitate to slip her own hand behind her back solely to grip Lexa’s wrists. As a thank you.

“How’d you know?” is the first thing Clarke says, the sound of her voice rough even to her own ears.

Abby’s gaze still scans over her, like she’s looking for physical evidence, a tell. “You missed Unity Day a month ago.”

“I’ve missed it before.”

“Not without calling it first,” Abby counters, staring right through her.

Clarke looks away.

When no response comes, Abby continues on like just to fill the space between them. “So, I called you, and… nothing came.” And then she sighs, a _familiar_ one that Clarke knows even more intimately than Lexa’s own. “So I called your uncle, because I know you’d at least tell him if you’re avoiding me. But he’d heard nothing either. And I kept asking and everyone—everyone said the same.”

Her voice cracks near the end, those weeks of grieving showing itself.

Clarke still doesn’t know what to say. Does she apologise for that? Or is that even more insulting, stealing the blame that was never hers to begin with?

This is where they should be hugging, she’s pretty sure. But the gap between them feels so _damn far_. And while when she was in the _mountain_ and couldn’t sleep and so there’d been those times where she’d just lie there. Just stare up at the bars and run through the laundry list of her regrets and mistakes and what-if’s.

She’d thought about her mother more than once.

It’d been easier in that moment, sure there was no way out of this, to think: _if I had the chance, I would do better._

But she’d never given any thought about the how.

Not much point to when you’re lying in a grave.

She forces in a steadying breath and focuses on the weight of Lexa’s presence behind her, and while they’re not touching anymore Clarke knows that it would never matter where Lexa was—she would feel her anyway, would always _find_ her.

This is their curse.

“You ever heard of the mountain?” Clarke tries. Abby frowns, the answer obvious. She exhales through her nose, and just says it, point blank. “I kinda got… taken underground.”

“Underground?” Abby repeats, but her eyes have gone wide, the sudden spike of her fear heavy enough that a few of those nearby glance over to them in concern.

Clarke glances back to Lexa first, not even sure what she’s looking for. But Lexa nods at her all the same, like urging her to go on, that she’s not moving, not leaving. She looks back to her mother, rubs the back of her neck with a strained laugh and seems to miss the way Abby isn’t even looking at her anymore but bouncing between her _and_ Lexa.

“Look, can—can we just go somewhere private?” Clarke says, and Abby nods slowly, though there’s a different brand of caution written all over her face, now.

She jerks her chin to Lexa still stood behind her. “Who’s this with you?”

“That’s Lexa. My prison wife,” Clarke says casually.

Lexa makes a choking noise, Abby pales, and the family members who’d been not-so-secretly eavesdropping all freeze simultaneously.

“You can hide outside with Charlie if you want, no shame,” she whispers aside to Lexa, offers her a genuinely apologetic look, and then merely grabs her mother’s arm and leads her to the nearest empty room all while Abby makes various, valiant attempt at sentences that all die midway through.

Noble deaths, for sure.

-

They stay for far longer than Clarke thought they’d last. By the time the gathering eases down, she and Lexa are still around to help pack some furniture away, carry some dishes back to the sink. To no one’s surprise, none of the food made it somewhere even vaguely close to the end. Abby had to declare the kitchen off-limits only a quarter through the night.

But though it takes a while, Lexa relaxes more and more as the night wears on. She does the polite greetings and niceties with the diplomatic grace one would expect from a four-hundred-year-old leader of vampires, though much to Clarke’s amusement whenever they’re torn from each other’s side it’s always Charlie that Lexa seems to end up side-by-side with. Especially after they came back inside, grin through Danny's exasperation.

Charlie isn’t the _only_ human here by any means, but they do seem to be the only one who seems to truly understand there’s dating werewolves, and then there’s dating Griffin women. And then there’s _both_.

The only close-call comes through when she’s just finished explaining everything. Where Clarke can’t do nothing more than stand there and sigh as, predictably, the second she’s done unloading her trip from hell and back, she was then strong-armed into an injury inspection. Despite her loud protest that she was perfectly _fine_ , thank you, mom, the doctor had gone spontaneously deaf and continued on with it, anyway.

What stalls her is the stomach, though. Because, unlike all the rest, while Clarke stands staring up at the ceiling and counting each individual crack—she _feels_ it, when Abby pushes her stomach with her hand as a test. And while it’s been months and the damage has healed enough that the pain is mostly phantom now, Clarke still reacts. Like a reflex. Flinches back.

“Don’t,” Clarke blurts, but it’s too late and Abby lifts the bottom of her shirt.

To show the scar there, that harsh white line slashed a little above her navel.

Already she’s pushing the hands away and yanking the material down, but Abby’s eyes are too wide, too full of such pain to pretend anything else.

“Silver,” Abby whispers, because there’s no other way to get those distinctive burn marks around the edges of flesh. Not unless the blade itself was white hot, and _that’s_ not really a common circumstance to find yourself in.

“I need to make sure Lexa is okay,” Clarke says in a rush, already backing away and _just_ short of full-on sprinting for the nearest exit.

But Abby catches her arm and pulls her back. “Hey, _hey_. Will you stop, please? Please, just— _stop,_ Clarke. Stop.”

Every instinct is screaming to do the opposite, but Clarke listens.

It hurts to look up and see the tears in Abby’s eyes. Because it’s one thing _saying_ what she’d escaped from, and then there’s seeing the physical evidence, the undeniable. Warily, like she expects for her to bolt as any second, Abby releases the grip on her arm. When Clarke just continues standing there, she raises those same hands in an act of peace.

“Just… tell me one thing. Just one thing, and then you can go, okay?”

Clarke swallows through the dry mess of her throat, though caves with a slow nod. It feels too cruel to deny this.

Abby frowns to herself, taking her time like she wants to pick the right words first. “I know that… you got out from there. But the—the people that did this, they…”

“They’re dead,” Clarke finishes quietly.

Abby blinks, and straightens her back. “All of them? You said they were a base.”

This is definitely not the time to mention that Lexa did most of the slaughtering. “We survived. We got the rest out.”

“And you killed them.”

“We survived,” Clarke repeats, sharper.

But unlike the fight she was expecting, Abby just nods. “What for the one that did this?”

Clarke’s eyes drop to where her mother had glanced pointedly, to the scar hiding beneath her shirt. If she closes her eyes for long enough, she can still _vividly_ reimagine the second. That instant the spear had pushed into her and the entire word had turned white. She remembers the way Lexa watched her. How scared she’d looked.

“I found him after we broke free,” Clarke says, and leaves it at that.

They both drown in the ensuing quiet, the only sound the muffled chatting and laughter from downstairs. Someone’s in the middle of a wrestle of some kind, though considering Abby’s previous warning it’s most likely been watered down into an arm-wrestling contest or lesser, something that _won’t_ break all the furniture. People are cheering, making bets on who will win.

There’s no warning for it. But the sounds are all too familiar and suddenly she’s breathing too hard and she’s backing as far as she can from the door, the room feeling too small, too _dark_ and trapped and hopeless. And yet, just as fast, solid hands are on her shoulders and steering her away from the noise.

“Is it the sound? Everyone downstairs? Are they too loud?” Abby urges her, firm but gentle all the same.

She’s still breathing too fast and her throat is too tight to say anything, so Clarke nods with what little awareness she has left. All her mother does is nod firmly back at her, tells her to breathe, just _breathe_ and then bolts from the room. The crowd is still yelling and jeering until all at once it snuffs out.

Abby runs back into the room the next second.

“I’m sorry I left you,” she pants, shutting the door and rushing over to her. “But I—”

Clarke bursts forward and yanks her into such a desperate hug she’s sure Abby’s lungs will suffer for it. But the world is quiet now, and after the heartbeat of being stunned Abby wraps her arms around her too, _holds_ her with that same desperation. She closes her eyes and inhales as deep as she’s able from her mother’s shirt and uses it to ground herself into the present. Analyses every single scent inside it.

It works after a while. The panic loses its stranglehold on her lungs and for a long, timeless moment it’s only the both of them stood there, holding on.

“It’s over,” Abby says at last, in what is supposed to be reassurance.

What Clarke _almost_ answers back is the exact words that Emerson had said to her, that last time in the ring: _I will never escape this_.

What she instead answers is something equally terrible, and a million times more hopeless.

“I think I’m in love.”

The fact Abby adapts so easily to this left-field curveball is solid proof they’re blood related. “You mean the vampire, don’t you? The one who came with you.” 

They don’t pull away from the embrace. There’s no way Clarke can do this while looking her mother in the eye.

“Where… How—”

“She saved me in the mountain.”

“Oh.”

Abby mulls this over. Her mouth opens again, wanting to make sure her mother understands this isn’t about _physical_ saving. This is about her soul. This is about how Lexa was and is the one constant through everything that has made her feel _human_.

“She’s immortal.”

It comes half like a question, half a cautious statement.

“Yeah,” Clarke whispers.

Funny, that even after the worst of it, they’re still doomed.

Funny.

-

Doomed as they are, though, they go on.

Lexa does end up giving that fabled house tour, which is definitely a good idea since the amount of times that Clarke has just been blindly guessing which door leads where has led to a lot of violent swearing. There’s frustration, and then there’s opening five entire wrong doors all while desperately needing to piss. Not fun.

Who even needs so many rooms, anyway? She’d lived fine enough with a max of two or three. Maybe five if she’s feeling adventurous. Who needs _twenty_ _?_

But then Lexa shows her around, and after being excitedly led into a home library—with _so many_ books it feels like there’s no way Lexa will ever read them all—and after that, a gym room, a game room, and basically everything that she’ll never be able to touch in the daytime.

It kinda makes sense, in a vampire’s eyes. The night really isn’t that long. Twelve hours _sounds_ like a shit tonne of time on paper, but once you’re living it, and you’re filling up all that space—it turns into nothing. The room shrouded in the sanctuary darkness now failing to fend off the morning light crawling in through the window.

Of course in the _one place_ the sun will never touch them—yeah, they’ll crampack as much of a world as they can into four walls.

Does realising this mean Clarke will stop cursing out the house when she can’t find a bathroom?

No. But it _does_ mean she mutters it under her breath, so Lexa doesn’t hear.

The last stop of the tour takes them downstairs. It’s not exactly _hidden_ , but the door to the basement is tucked on the opposite side of the staircase, pressed into the wall supporting the stairs. To get to it, you have to walk the whole way around the stairs, peek your head behind the corner.

This is also the only locked door in the interior. It’s a number pad, and Clarke perks up behind her as Lexa pushes the buttons with that kind of speed and flourish that only happens with muscle memory, when the brain has nothing to do with it. “Is this your secret vault?” Clarke asks, almost bouncing on her feet in excitement.

Lexa just smiles secretly down to the lock, though. “Sort of.”

There’s no audio cue if the code’s correct or not. She pushes down on the handle, and it allows the movement with no resistance, the door careening open with a draft of cool air. Since it’s her nature, Clarke then leans forward with her neck, tries to scent what’s inside it.

She doesn’t smell hard metal. No paper or plastic, nothing that would tell her if a hidden stack of gold is crammed down there.

Weirdly, it smells like… wood. _Heavy,_ too, like there’s a secret forest down there or something. But there’s no dirt, no earth. Nothing that would indicate a greenhouse. And even stranger, faint strains of metal stick out too.

Huh.

“Watch your step,” Lexa warns back to her. “They’re steep.”

Solely for Clarke’s sake, she flicks the light switch on. A part of her is minorly insulted by this—because she _does_ have good eyes for the dark, though perhaps not at vampire level, but wolves hunt at night too—except she’s shutting up a second later, as it turns the steps _are_ way steep and maybe the light is necessary. Maybe.

She spends so much effort watching her feet not to trip and fall that when she makes the solid ground, that first moment she lifts her head, her eyes go wide at what she sees.

Musical instruments. _Everywhere_. All the walls are lined to the brim of what Clarke can only assume is every type of instrument in existence. It looks like there’s been some vague attempt of organisation, where there’s a soundproofed wall _racked_ with guitars, below rows of stands with various other stringed instruments. Violins, violas, even an ornate harp stood proudly in the midst of this.

Another side is dedicated to wind instruments. Another to percussion. One section she doesn’t even know what the fuck that is. In theory it’s a guitar, but the monster has multiple heads poking up from the top _and_ bottom.

“Holy shit,” Clarke says, breathless. “Holy _shit_.”

Lexa drifts to the grand piano in the front centre of this basement, sitting herself into the seat riddled in cracks with timeless ease. Clarke follows close behind, though doesn’t sit down with her. Because while _yes_ music is art and art is music there’s a reason her first instinct has always been a paintbrush, not a guitar pick.

Know your limits.

“I remember little of my birth parents,” Lexa admits, her voice an entirely different breed of softness. It’s that weird instinct that everybody seems to have around anything ancient, anything that’s clearly loved so deeply for—there’s this hesitance, the fear that even your presence alone will somehow ruin everything. 

Clarke falls quiet, and looks over to Lexa with genuine shock.

Lexa has never once mentioned her birth parents before.

“And while I can’t even remember their faces anymore, I do remember this: the voice of my mother. When she would sing to me. And my father, when he would play alongside her. I think he used to be an entertainer of some kind. Perhaps the both of them were. I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

With careful fingers, Lexa eases open the piano lid. Dust disperses into the air, but the keys underneath are clean, protected by the covering. Clarke steps closer on instinct and finds that just like the worn stool beneath, there're signs of long age in the keys. More yellow than white. Tiny nicks from decades of nails scratched all over the surface.

Lexa raises her hand, hovers there inches above the keys.

“Do you want to know the one oath I made Anya swear to me to uphold in my absence?” Her fingers press down. The chord rings out warm and pleasant and _perfect_ , and Lexa looks over her shoulder with that familiar half-smile. “‘Keep my piano tuned.’”

Clarke laughs, shaking her head fondly but coming over anyway, sitting down next to her when Lexa scoots to one side of the seat. “What about the rest, then? Just leave them to the wolves? You realise this is a horde, babe.”

“A collection,” Lexa corrects. “It’s not the same.”

“Spoken like a true hoarder.”

“Collector.”

This doesn’t feel like something she’ll win. “Okay, _collector._ Can you at least play them all? Like, if I pointed to…” her eyes roam over the horde/collection, and settle on that Frankenstein of a guitar. “Can you play that? Or even know what it’s called?”

“Pikasso Guitar. I had it custom made after seeing it in concert once and was fascinated.”

Clarke’s grin falls away. “Wait, you really can play _everything_ in here?”

Lexa shrugs. “Immortality is a long time, Clarke. You cannot survive without something with no true end, so you may always have a goal, something to reach for.” Her fingers move again. Nothing too crazy, just a warm-up seems like. Re-familiarising herself with scales. “ _My_ goal, see, is to master every instrument I can find.”

“Big dream.”

Lexa laughs through her nose. “Anya’s is to master every cocktail imaginable. Ask her to make you something obscure the next you see her. She’ll adore you.”

It’s said like a joke for the most part, but Clarke makes careful note of this. Anything that might help in winning Anya over is serious shit. “Play me something?” Clarke asks quietly, shooting her a nervous look.

But Lexa brightens up as if she’d been waiting on this. “What would you like?”

“Whatever you love.”

Lexa watches her for a moment too long.

And then the mindless scales she’d been running through fade into silence, her full attention shifting to the piano. A heavy beat of consideration before Lexa just blinks to herself and hangs her hands above the keys again, pulls in a breath, and plays.

It’s a soft song. She begins near the high end, and works her way down, settles somewhere in the middle with that repetitive sort of back and forth you can fall asleep to. It builds and falls, but always at its heart coming back to that—the rest of the notes and chords falling away, only leaving that two-step that never seems to end.

All the stress bleeds from her the longer she plays. Like this is it, the closest she will ever get to breathing again. Eventually, she even begins singing, soft and ethereal and swaying inside the music. Some notes don’t hit right in her throat at first, six months being a _long_ while to go without practice, but once it finds itself, gets back its balance between two feet, Clarke’s head tips into Lexa’s shoulder, and she closes her eyes.

She still doesn’t open them when the song finishes, the reverberating echo of that last note the only sound in the entire world.

“Why this one?” Clarke whispers.

“I like the sound.”

She smiles into Lexa’s neck, settles there.

Later, in return, Clarke builds up the courage to show Lexa her own art back. It is fucking terrifying, because her whole life art has been the one thing she’s held close to the vest. Even her own family sees next to nothing of her art. The few pieces she _has_ shared have been few and far between and only with those she’s exceedingly close with.

Her father has probably seen the most from her out of everyone.

But Lexa had bared her soul for her, and even more than that: Clarke _wanted_ to show her. It’s not about debt or owing, more like relief. The sheer relief at finding someone where it’s safe to show her throat too. Of course, she doesn’t tell Lexa how big of a deal it is when she asks—no, mumbles—if there was any particular space in the house she wouldn’t mind getting a little paint splattered.

“I always thought you drew that map a little too well,” Lexa’d said in response, but it was with that soft, victorious smile, like she was pleased she’d sussed this out from the beginning.

But at seeing the way Clarke was decidedly not smiling, hands dug deep into her pockets and looking about two seconds from bolting—Lexa blinked, and seemed to understand how much effort it had taken to even bring this up voluntarily.

“Of course,” Lexa amended herself, her face turning serious. Warm. “I’ve got a room I used mostly for storage. I can reorganise it into a space for you?”

“Oh no, I don’t need a whole space. I’m not that—”

“It’s not being used anyway,” Lexa interrupted, cutting in before Clarke could insult herself. Clarke just swallowed down the words and nodded mutely. Suddenly, the woods sounded like the best thing in the world right now, but she only made a few steps out the room before she was sighing and turning right back around.

She ran back up to Lexa and kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” she mumbled, as quiet but sincerely as possible, and _then_ escaped out the back door, her shirt already halfway off her body, blond fur crawling up her spine.

It’s dark out when she gets back. Snowfall has begun too, and Clarke trots the way back to the house with snowflakes smothered all through her fur. Up by the backdoor the porch light is on, courtesy of Lexa, and something smells _really_ good from inside. She sprints the last of the distance only to be foiled by a hand-written note stuck to the inside of the glass slide door.

_If you track mud into this house again, you will sleep on the couch._

Clarke’s eyes drop lower, where under the note she can see the kitchen counter backed up in the corner. And she can see the raw steak on a plate there. A bribe and a warning all at once. For a long beat, Clarke just stands there on the deck, pacing in circles over what to sacrifice: her morals or her bed. There is absolutely _nothing_ that motivates her more than being told not to do something.

But no bed means no sleeping with Lexa.

Damn.

Clarke holds out for one last stubborn minute solely out of principle, snaps her teeth viciously before trudging down the porch steps, and then shaking all her fur out, trying to rid as much as she can. By the time she stalks back over, the tracks left behind in the snow change midway, a heel jutting out where the wolf’s paw should end, the black soles of her feet fading, losing the pads.

“Track mud my ass,” Clarke grumbles to herself, snatching the towel Lexa had left for on the chair outside, slumping down on it with a scowl. “ _I’m_ not the one who spills blood everywhere. You think mud stains even compare to _blood_ stains? That’s not even counting how many bedsheets we’ve lost from it. Un-fucking-believable. I’m suing for defamation of character.”

“You realise I can hear your muttering from the other side of the house.”

Clarke doesn’t look up from where’s wiping her feet, grinning only to herself. She’d sensed Lexa walking up to the door long before she spoke. “Locking me out of my own house. The sheer audacity of the youth today. No damn respect.”

The glass door slides open. Clarke’s eyes shoot up, unable to stop the warmth spilling through her chest at finding Lexa stood there with her arms crossed, her brow pushing right up to her hairline.

“Yes,” Lexa says, though her eye seems to stick firmly to Clarke’s own, and definitely, totally never dipping anywhere below that. Considering her state of undress and all. “There is _very_ little respect around here.”

“Oh yeah? Why don’t you teach me some?”

“I’m cooking,” Lexa tries, but even Clarke sees the dry swallow when she stands up.

She offers a shrug and pushes closer while Lexa backs with every step. “I can multitask.”

“Multitasking is a myth. The brain doesn’t, uh— _can’t_ do more than one thing at once. It’s just task switching.” Clarke nods very seriously, but Lexa’s run out of ground and is right up against the door now, meaning there’s no way to escape when she closes the gap entirely between them, their bodies flush. In instinct Lexa’s hands slip around her hips, gripping hard like to anchor herself.

“I can task switch, then,” Clarke murmurs into her ear. Lexa lets her head thud into the glass behind her and mutters curses under her breath. And only because she knows how crazy it makes her, Clarke trails her lips down Lexa’s jaw to her neck, and scrapes her teeth over the flesh of her throat, biting down just enough there’s no mistaking what she’s implying.

This is what does it.

“Ten minutes, and then I’m checking the lamb shanks,” Lexa says in a rush, and before Clarke can even blink has shoved aside the door and yanked her in, kissing her fiercely.

Sometimes it pays to be stubborn.

-

They do it around the end of year at the annual Winter Summit. Lexa tells her that it’s this whole thing with vampires. It usually happens around the winter solstice, though the date tends to jump around depending on which coven you’re from. Errors mostly, different calendars for different societies—and that this day is so important that it’d even become a clause in the peace treaties. In the name of keeping all fair, each year it rotated on which clan would be responsible for the celebrations. 

And more importantly to the politicians in the room: _who_ would be in charge of the date.

Vampires are very particular about dates.

For some reason.

But the thing is, and the reason why Lexa told her that this should be the first coven meeting that Clarke should come along for—the Winter Summit is about one thing and one thing only.

Peace.

It’s the one exception, the one day-off for those centuries upon centuries of war and suffering and grudges. You’re not allowed to be a dick on Sonwamplei is the gist of it. Lexa frowns when Clarke says this, but since she is still _technically_ correct has to swallow her pain and just nod stiffly. “Everyone will be less inclined to violence,” Lexa goes on to explain, “and Trikru are in control this year, so you’d have to be a fool to act out.”

“Why is announcing you have a girlfriend going to lead to _violence_?”

“Not against you,” Lexa is quick to assure, and holds her eyes so she understands the promise. “Even if it wasn’t… me, that you turn up with, no one would harm you solely for standing by a vampire’s side.”

But now Clarke frowns, too, because the only other option for this question is far worse. “You mean you’re worried someone will hurt _you_?”

Lexa is silent for a heavy beat.

Clarke doesn’t know what to do, just stands there with chest aching.

“The Commander works alone,” Lexa says quietly, the words sounding worn and wrung dry. Maybe not so wholeheartedly _believed_ anymore, but it’s obvious how often this has been said to her, or even Lexa’s told herself. “And my position… the Coalition was made by my hand, but someone else will succeed me when the time comes. It is not made to live and die by myself. Some might take my announcing of my fealty to you as weakness, that I’m abandoning my duties as Commander for…”

Lexa rips her eyes away, grinds her teeth like to strangle off the end of sentence, kill it before it gets too far. It only makes what she was about to say so much _more_ obvious.

Clarke thinks it over her words carefully, knowing how close the both of them are pushing it here. “It’s a big deal to you guys, isn’t it? Finding a partner.”

Lexa’s stare doesn’t shift from the wall. “When that person _isn’t_ a vampire, and isn’t immortal, yes.”

If there is one word Clarke hates more than anything else in the English language, it’s that damned one starting with _i_.

She closes her eyes and tips forward, leaning their heads together. Before her girlfriend can run away, Clarke makes sure to reach blindly with her hands, tangle her fingers with Lexa’s own, _hold_ her close. “If it’s too dangerous,” she starts, and does her absolute best to keep her voice steady, “then you don’t have to say anything. I’m happy like this. So long as I have you—have _us_ —I will be happy.”

Lexa doesn’t answer for a while. She doesn’t move either, though. Just stands there with her in their bedroom in the dark, breathing slow and warm and terrified. And then: “I will not be ruled by fear,” Lexa murmurs. “But, there’s… you must promise me one thing. And you must swear you’ll hold to this no matter what.”

 _That’s_ not ominous at all. “You’re scaring me.”

Lexa squeezes her hand like an apology, though continues on nonetheless. “The chances are _slim_ , and I most likely overthinking this, but if anything is to happen to me: you must promise me you will not seek revenge.”

Clarke opens her eyes. Stares at the carpet.

This is about Emerson.

“I know what you’re capable of,” Lexa says when Clarke still doesn’t answer. To her surprise there’s no judgement there, just genuine honesty. It hurts worse, somehow. “And I know what you’re capable of when it comes to people you… care about.”

“I’m not going to rush in guns blazing, Lexa.”

Lexa doesn’t laugh. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

Clarke loses her smile too, as weak as it was anyway. The little space between heats up, like the unspoken is a physical, tangible presence, a live-wire that’s crackling between them. Neither of them move away from each other, though. They know better, and even two months later since the whole mountain shit storm—even _now_ Clarke still takes any and all excuses to touch her, because she remembers too vividly what it was like with those bars between them.

“If they hurt you, I won’t just stand idly by for it.” Clarke squeezes Lexa’s hands in a death grip, struggling to keep her breathing even. “And if they were to ever… kill you… no. I can’t promise what you’re asking.”

“Is this because you’re a werewolf?” Lexa jokes, and while she _knows_ that this is just an attempt to lighten the tension, Clarke swallows and feels her chest shake.

And then she forces a laugh, squeezing her eyes shut tight so the heat in them can’t spill over. “Something like that,” she tells her, instead of the real reason.

-

Despite that nerve-wracking conversation, she and Lexa arrive at the Summit and Clarke can’t even begin to describe the sheer _relief_ at finding the whole gang waiting for them already there. They all even dress like real people this time. Even _Raven_ is there, as promised, and the entire group—Lincoln, Octavia, Raven, Anya, Gustus, _shit,_ even Monty and some other dude she doesn’t even know—all of them turn around at her and Lexa’s approach, wave them over.

The gang's all hiding out in the front garden, huddled together in the cold. It looks like Octavia is wearing two entirely separate jackets. Though, the second one is definitely Lincoln’s, considering how it engulfs her. None of the vampires react to the snow drifting silently around them. _Anya_ isn’t even wearing a shirt with sleeves, which seems to be something Raven has taken a whole lot of interest in if her blatant staring is anything to go by. Gustus wears an expensive suit and right next to him is Monty in a black hoodie and jeans.

Basically, nobody is dressed like they’re going to the same event.

These are her people, alright.

“Don’t _you_ look weird without a prison uniform,” Clarke throws to the group, grinning when it earns her glares from every mountain survivor.

“Don’t _you_ look weird not covered in blood,” Raven snarks back.

This garners Gustus and Anya’s curiosity, but no-follow up is given and the conversation moves on.

Clarke is still mildly terrified about how this is going to go, though some tight muscle eases from the back of her neck as they join the group huddle and Gustus and the one person she doesn’t know step aside to let them in. The new guy seems nice at least and grins real wide at her when Clarke gives him a nod in greeting.

“This is Jasper,” Monty introduces, watching this. Jasper offers them a goofy wave. Both Lexa and her raise their eyebrows simultaneously. “He’s a dryad, like me.”

Ah. That explains the smell of forest and magic from him.

“I thought Monty was totally gone,” Jasper says, and despite the solemn words he keeps grinning like the excitement is still exploding inside him. “But you guys saved him! And then _invited_ him to this like, crazy ass Vampire Christmas or something?”

All the vampires in the group frown.

Monty closes his eyes and sighs as if he’s had to deal with this for a long, long time. “What Jas _means_ to say is that we’re both very grateful for all that you’ve done, and I’m humbled to accept your invitation here.”

Lexa nods respectfully. “We never would have succeeded without your aid, Monty. This is the least I could do in repayment.” Her voice lowers, turns serious. “You will always have an ally with myself for what you have done.”

Monty’s eyes go wide. Especially when this sentiment seems to echo in all the _other_ vampires around him, each one offering the same nod of promise. “Um, thank you?” he squeaks out, his entire face gone red.

Jasper jumps right on this. “Yes, thank _you_ ,” he says, but it’s said directly to Clarke, and he even goes so far as to pick up Clarke’s hand and does this comical, over the top kiss to it, finishes the joke off with a wink.

Everyone sucks in the same sharp breath.

Clarke can _feel_ the way Lexa stills beside her. It is a very, very bad sign, and, in true Trikru fashion, Gustus immediately holds steady in this new promise to Monty’s safety and so merely grabs both sides of Jasper, _picks him up_ , and safely deposits him on _his_ side, so he’s no longer close to Clarke.

“If you have any value over your life,” Gustus mutters to him, though not unkindly, “you will keep your hands to yourself and yourself only.”

Jasper blinks, and when his eyes snap back over to them, Clarke just threads her fingers through Lexa’s own and holds both their hands up in the open, doing her best to curb her smirk.

“Swing and a miss, bud,” Raven says in the awkward silence. To his credit, he laughs it off and moves on.

“You both look nice,” Jasper amends, and nods his head in particular to Lexa’s direction.

Clarke beams and turns to meet Lexa’s stoic gaze, pointedly looking up and down the fine black suit. Lexa’s eyes soften the moment they connect with her own. “ _Very_ nice,” Clarke says, and reaches with her free hand to curl around the base of the blood-red tie, hooks the silk material and tugs her forward, kisses her slow.

“You’ve made us late enough,” Lexa mumbles through the kiss, smiling, and pulls back far too soon for Clarke’s liking.

“I don’t remember you complaining before. I mean, if anything you were—”

“Do _not_ finish that sentence,” Anya snaps.

Gustus looks equally uncomfortable. “We should get inside, I think.”

“Yes, _please_ ,” Octavia spits, her teeth chattering. Lincoln frowns and saddles closer to her—if that’s even possible—throwing his arms around her and using his body to block as much of the cold as he can. He says nothing, but his eyes jump to Lexa’s with obvious pleading.

Nobody moves until Lexa acquiesces with a nod. Before they do, though, she leans close to Clarke’s ear first. “Stay close to me,” Lexa murmurs, the complete lack of any humour in her voice wiping the grin off Clarke’s face. Instead of a verbal answer she squeezes her hand as hard as she can, like a promise.

It must work, too, because they go in.

-

The night actually goes pretty well.

No one shows off their fangs and all the people Lexa introduces her to react as polite as can be, though Clarke isn’t a fool and there’s no mistaking the very, very close way they watch her. Their curiosity is obvious, and throughout the whole night she is perpetually aware of the eyes on her back—even if every time she turns around, _suddenly_ nobody is looking in her direction anymore.

She’s not the only non-vampire non-human here, though. It’d been a gamble, but it pays off, as the vampires all seem equally curious about the _other_ stragglers brought in too. They’re especially weird and confused around Octavia. For Monty and Jasper, they seem to gather easy enough the heavy, heavy scent of magic woven into every inch of them. That magic is _deep_ and old and ancient, and vampires tend to respect that sort of thing.

None of them seem able to work out what _Octavia_ is, though. It’s amusing to watch from the sidelines, as anytime Lincoln brings her up to introduce her to someone—the couple always leave with that someone frowning, just staring in a complete loss at Octavia’s back.

“It’s because of your smell,” Clarke explains, the words kinda slurring and tripping in her mouth. 

The Summit’s been going on for a few hours now. Just before, Lexa had led her down to this mansion’s basement and to the hidden wine cellar beneath. The wine is so curated and looked after they had a bodyguard by the door, holding up his hand in signal to back off only to take one look at Lexa and step aside.

The three of them—Raven, Octavia, Clarke—are working through a _second_ bottle of that hideously expensive wine between them now. They’re splayed out on the fancy leather couch together, tipsy and watching the fireplace crackle in front of them. Octavia wouldn’t stop complaining about the cold, see.

Lexa had to leave her for some politicking, and while the look she had shot at the idea of leaving Clarke all alone was borderline terrified, Gustus had seen this too and he’d reassured her with a wordless promise to watch out for her through just a glance and a firm nod.

But Clarke was scared too. “Will you go with her?” she’d whispered to Anya, watching Lexa disappear around the corner with some bald guy.

Anya had stared at her for a heavy beat. Like she was considering something. Considering _her_.

Then, silently, she moved and followed Lexa to join the impromptu meeting.

“My smell?” Octavia says, scrunching her nose up.

“Vampires suck shit at tracking anything that isn’t blood. So to _them_ you smell like magic, but also not. It’s too complicated for them, right? Like, there’s just—too much shit. They probably _think_ you’re a witch, but they also know that’s wrong. It’s confusing. They can’t figure it out.”

“Oh yeah? So what does she smell like with a _good_ nose?” Raven grumbles.

Clarke grins from where she’s squashed in the middle of them, Octavia hugging one side and Raven the other. It’s because her body is like a furnace, because once the wolf is awake it’s _awake_ , your body’s now running for the two of you.

It makes getting out of bed with Lexa an ordeal. Lexa always tries dragging her back down, refusing to lose that warmth.

“You smell like a thousand nights of sleep,” Clarke mumbles, and tips her head back into the couch, watches the ceiling spin around. Old wine is _hard_ wine. “Like if you fell asleep at the beach and the sand swallowed you.”

Raven huffs to herself, the roll of her eyes practically audible. “Fuckin’ wolves. You want a medal because you can put a name to someone’s pile of shit?”

“Better that than dumbass hearing that doesn’t do anything. All you do is sit in fucking trees all day, lazy ass.”

“I have better eyes,” Raven retorts. 

Clarke barks a laugh. “You do fucking not.”

“Yes, I _do_. Your eyes can’t see shit.”

“You realise we hunt at _night_ , right?”

“Please. You hunt whatever you can get, you’re that shit. No fucking finesse.”

“You fucking—”

“ _Guys!_ ” Octavia snaps, cutting them both off. Her shout is so loud all the nearby vampires in the room look over. “Like, I get it, cats and dogs, whatever. But can you please just shut the fuck up and stop arguing about _the_ stupidest shit imaginable?”

Both she and Raven freeze, share a wide-eyed stare.

“She thinks _that_ is the stupidest argument we can have?” Raven whispers to her, offended at the audacity.

“Tip of the iceberg,” Clarke agrees, shaking her head in disbelief.

Octavia sighs and plants her face into Clarke’s shoulder. “I hate you both.”

Luckily, not long after this Lexa’s scent drifts by and Clarke grins, perking up in her seat—and ignoring the loud grumbles of protests this gets from the parasites attached to both her arms—craning her neck back until her roaming eyes settle on Lexa, who’s just entered the room.

She’s not alone, either.

A vampire stands next to her. He’s tall, the sharp angles of his face cut by long, braided dark hair. But unlike all the other vampires she’s spent the night being introduced to, there’s far less stoicism to him. The corner of his mouth tugs up in something like a perpetual smirk. He notices her curiosity too, because while he hangs back and Lexa crosses the distance—he meets her gaze steadily, flicks his hand to her in a sarcastic wave, almost.

“Hey baby,” Clarke murmurs when Lexa is close again. She tips her neck backwards even further, and is rewarded by Lexa’s amused smile before, dutifully, she leans down and meets the kiss.

Her girlfriend pulls back up with a quiet laugh through her nose. “I see you’ve been surrounded.”

“I’m being held captive,” Clarke says, and gives a pointed shake to both of her arms that resolutely are _not_ let go of. The parasites both grumble at the movement, tighten their grip in pure spite.

Lexa just shakes her head to herself. “I’ve got someone I want you to meet, if you manage to free yourself.”

Clarke perks up at this. None of the vampires she’s been introduced to have been because Lexa truly _wanted_ it. This would be the first. “Who are they?”

“He’s my friend. We’ve known each other a long time.”

“Commander’s got _friends?_ ” Raven repeats, dumbfounded, and Clarke takes that as the last straw and _finally_ frees herself from imprisonment. Again.

It’s a fast break—trying to keep the damage as clean as possible—though, in no surprise, the escape is met with loud, furious protests on both sides, and she has to rip herself forward in one fell swoop so no hands can drag her right back in.

The mission is a success.

“We’re keeping the wine,” Octavia growls and glares at them both.

“That is very much not yours,” Lexa retorts, but she doesn’t pick a fight over it and just seems relieved that Clarke is up on two feet once more. “Come with me?”

Lexa holds out her hand for her, and she takes it without pause.

“How was your meeting before?” Clarke asks as they walk away. Her balance _mostly_ keeps up, except Lexa still ends up supporting some of her weight and guides her upright so the floor can’t slip out beneath her. It was very nice wine.

“Did I ever tell you about Titus?”

Clarke thinks it over before shaking her head.

Lexa grimaces. “He’s… one of my advisors. Not of my choice, but simply because he advised the Trikru Commander before me. And the previous Commander was killed before he was. So he stayed.”

“A grand-advisor,” Clarke says, nodding seriously.

They slow their pace, and Lexa’s eyes snap over to hers, narrow into thin slits. “Clarke, please tell me you are not drunk.”

“I am not drunk.”

Lexa stares at her.

“Okay. I’m _tipsy_. But tipsy is not drunk, therefore, you cannot be mad at me.”

“May the gods bring me mercy,” Lexa mutters, low enough it escapes Clarke’s hearing. But she sees her mouth move, and Lexa must realise the impending argument about to break out because she hurriedly clears her throat and moves on with the conversation, if only to save herself. “I knew Titus wouldn’t react well with my news about us. So I ensured he and I could speak in private.”

Clarke frowns, though. Something cold and dark shifts in her chest. “Is he the one you think will hurt you?”

“No,” Lexa answers, and does so quick enough that it relieves Clarke of any doubt. “It’s his job to keep me alive. He would never do such a thing.”

“Oh. So is… is he the one you’re going to introduce me to?”

“You have not met Titus. And preferably, I would like to keep it that way.”

That does not sound good. Before she can even open her mouth to start on anything, Lexa is pulling her around into a different room and calling to that vampire Clarke had seen with Lexa before. He’s leant up against a wall now, lazily watching the party around him and sipping from his almost empty glass of wine. Nobody hangs around him, either. Like he’s the rocks under the surf everybody avoids.

Probably just as dangerous, too.

When they approach, his eyes drag over to them and a wide, curious grin spreads the whole way across his lips, showing off his fangs. The guy seems to perfectly encapsulate the vibe of _I could fall asleep in front of you and you wouldn’t even notice_ , but he pushes himself off from the wall, and even dips his head in respect to them.

“Ah, Lexa. I see you’ve returned unscathed from Titus’ great clutches.” Lexa glares at him for the remark, but he seems utterly nonplussed by this. Instead, his attention shifts to Clarke. “And you. Unlike the rest, I do not believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you as of yet.”

Clarke glances to Lexa first, as if to check that this really is her supposed friend despite the fact that he acts _nothing_ like what she’d think Lexa looked for in company. “This is Roan,” Lexa introduces, confirming that, yes, he _is_ definitely who she’d been talking about. Somehow. Her eyes jump out to Roan, hesitating a beat before continuing. “And Roan, this is Clarke. My partner. She was the one who destroyed the mountain with me.” 

Unlike Jasper, when Roan reaches for her hand and brings it up to offer a kiss to her knuckles, there’s no joke in this. It’s with respect, ancient tradition. “An honour then,” Roan says, and the words sound genuine.

Okay. _Now_ it makes more sense why they’re friends.

“You must feel out of place being the only wolf in a den of nightwalkers,” Roan continues, breaking the silence that’d fallen between them all.

Clarke shoots a glance to the others in the far corners of the room, watching but _not_ watching. There might be a distinctive lack of people near this side, but the privacy is an illusion. Any word out of her mouth will be heard, just like she’s known the entire night. At least Lexa is close to her, and Clarke doesn’t hesitate to lean into her side, even though she is _not_ drunk. Just tipsy. Yes.

“I’ve been to weirder parties,” Clarke says, figuring that the most diplomatic answer she can land on.

Roan arches a brow, intrigued. “Have you?”

“Got invited to this witches’ thing once. They don’t give a fuck about _anything_. Halfway through, they brought in a goat and even did a whole sacrifice. Didn’t work, though. I think.”

“ _What?_ ” Lexa exclaims, and Clarke glances to her with a grin, nodding.

“No, for real. I think they were trying to summon something? I don’t know. All of us were completely fucking wasted. The goat wasn’t even theirs.”

Roan speaks up in disbelief this time. “ _What_ _?_ How did they get the goat, then?”

“I got it for ‘em. We were in the woods, right? Witches _love_ doing bonfires and shit in there. And they said they needed a sacrifice, so I just kinda… went and got one.” Both Roan and Lexa stare wide-eyed at her. She just shrugs nonchalantly. “Wasn’t my weirdest Friday night.”

Roan laughs and looks about as surprised as Lexa from the sound. He considers her a moment, before a pleased grin crawls across his mouth and he straightens up, nods to Clarke in approval. “How’s this? I’ve worked my drink the entire night, you see, and am due for more. I gather us all a round, and you can tell me about this supposed Friday night.”

“No blood,” Clarke says quickly, still remembering her mistake in sneaking a sip from Lexa’s glass earlier. To be fair, Lexa had profusely warned her she was not going to like it. But that had activated her stubborn gene, and so she’d forced a sip solely to prove she _would_ like it.

That was not such a successful mission.

Roan shows his hands in peace. “I’ll keep yours clean.”

He doesn’t move until Lexa gives him a nod, and then with that same grin he dips his chin and shifts past them to leave the room. And right as he passes Lexa, his pace slows, and he mutters as fast as he can, “My mother will hate her. You’ve done well.”

Lexa’s foot snaps out and it’s only vampire reflexes alone that save Roan from tripping face first into the floor. But he smoothly jumps the obstacle, doesn’t miss a beat and does nothing but laugh at her.

Clarke waits until he’s out of earshot before turning to her.

“Is there a reason everyone close to you in your life drags you relentlessly? Like, do you have a thing for that?”

“Clarke, stop talking.”

She leans closer till she’s right against Lexa’s ear, whispers the words low enough so even the other vampires couldn’t pick up on it. “Are you into that? You want me to discipline you? Want me to hold you down?”

“You’re incorrigible,” Lexa hisses, but she doesn’t resist when Clarke smirks dangerously and sidesteps _Lexa’s_ own sidestep, so they’re face to face.

“I’ll stop the moment you say so, but if you want…” She flattens her hand over Lexa’s stomach, lets it slide down the smooth black shirt until they reach her belt, digs her fingers beneath the leather and _tugs_.

A hand flashes forward, grips her wrist deathly tight. It doesn’t push her away, though. But _holds_ her there. Like a warning she can’t decide on. The reaction only has her smirk spreading further, and even worse she glances up and sees how dark Lexa’s eyes have turned, jaw clenched tight enough a muscle strains in her neck. Clarke wonders if she could get away with running her tongue up it, mouth the corded muscle with her teeth.

Lexa spots something over Clarke’s shoulder, and relief crashes all through her face when she jumps back. “Roan!” Lexa greets, like he is the best fucking thing that could happen to her right now. He must notice the new tension that she is practically vibrating with, because soon Lexa is clearing her throat and putting herself a solid arm’s length away from Clarke. “Any, uh… trouble?”

Of course, the retreat is futile since Clarke simply slides back over to her side.

Roan slows his approach to them. “You’re asking if I found trouble in the two minutes it took to get drinks?”

“That _was_ a very weird question,” Clarke adds on, like none of what just happened went down.

Lexa snatches the wine glass from Roan and drains the thing in one go.

-

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I do.”

“Clarke, it’s been months. And you _know_ how this will end.”

“I won’t until I try.”

“You’re doing this out of spite.”

Instead of answering that, Clarke just grins to herself, pushes up in her seat so her head is through the window, the wind rushing and whipping all over her face. And even though she knows how much Lexa _really_ isn’t all that fond when Clarke does this—mostly on account of her paranoia that some truck will speed down the opposite way and decapitate her, somehow— _still_ , despite this, there’s no mistaking the car speeding up.

No sound exists but the violent thrash of wind in her ears, and Clarke closes her eyes.

She only opens them again when she feels the car slow down.

It surprises her to see they’re here already. The sun’s long dead and buried by now, but Clarke is still careful to inhale their surroundings first for any other people before letting the blue in her eyes melt away, so she can take in where they are without squinting.

“This is it?” Clarke mutters back to Lexa, though she doesn’t stop surveying the dirt car park they’ve rolled into. At this time of night, there’s nobody else around. A line of sparse trees and bushes hug all along the front side of the lot. Some wood posts stick up from the patchy grass, looped with thick threads of rope for barriers.

It’s nice to see the green creeping back into the flora. Winter checked out a few weeks ago, just packed its bags and left. This is good, since if Clarke is going to follow through on this borderline suicidal impulse then she sure as _shit_ isn’t doing it in freezing, ice-cold waters. Because, yeah, she might be about to commit the second stupidest mortal sin for her kind, but that’s no excuse to go down screaming.

If there’s one thing the mountain hammered into her, it’s you take every advantage you can get.

“This is it,” Lexa sighs, and shuts off the engine. It makes the night feel about a thousand times smaller. But she can _hear_ it, even from here—the slow, repetitive crash of waves. This _is_ it. The ocean at last. “I still don’t think this is a good idea. It’s only going to hurt you.”

There’s real pain in her voice, like even the idea of Clarke’s suffering is a torture in itself. For this reason, Clarke pulls herself back fully into the car and looks over to her, but her girlfriend is staring hard through the front windshield. Her hands haven’t even moved off the wheel yet. Fingers just tap an incessant rhythm into the leather.

“Hey,” Clarke says quietly. Lexa still doesn’t look at her, but she also doesn’t stop her, either, when Clarke reaches over and gently pries off her grip on the wheel, threads her _own_ fingers through them, squeezes tight. “Look at me? Please?”

A muscle flexes in her jaw, though Lexa obeys, and her eyes shift hesitantly up to hers.

Clarke smiles now that she can finally see her face again. “You’re always telling me how you know your limits. Well, so do I. And I made a promise for this, once. I can’t just leave that.”

“You’re going to hate this,” Lexa tells her, for probably the millionth time.

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Lexa frowns. “There is no maybe. Werewolves hate water.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s to say I won’t be the one to break the chain?”

“Many people,” Lexa retorts, deadpan.

Clarke pushes her shoulder for that, and somehow this seems to be the final tipping point for her. There’s a long bout of silence, where Lexa stares and stares at her, eyes bouncing all over her face like she’s trying to immortalise this moment in her head.

“You’re very pretty in the moonlight,” is what Lexa settles on, and then she’s opening the door and getting out while Clarke lags behind, blushing stupidly in the dark.

-

It doesn’t shock her all that much, the smell of the ocean. That second when she steps up into the cool open and can _taste_ the salt in the air, feel it coat all over her tongue and leave her reeling.

What _does_ take her back is after they tread down the wood planks, walk barefoot over the cold sand and Clarke gets her first, real view of the sea.

And it is just _so fucking big_.

“Holy shit,” Clarke breathes, and a broad, uncontrollable grin splits open her face. “Dude! This is—holy _shit_.”

Despite the way Lexa keeps watching her with barely veiled anxiety, the infectious excitement is too much and the edge of a smile echoes across her lips too.

A breathless laugh breaks out of her, eyes wide and scanning the whole length of the horizon. “How far does it go?”

“You would have to swim for a _very_ long while before reaching land.”

“You know how to swim?”

“I’ve pissed off a few werewolves in my time.”

Clarke stares at her.

“Kidding,” Lexa adds, though she looks away suspiciously fast and clears her throat, nods her head forward. “Tide looks weak. We could get closer, if you want. It wouldn’t touch you.”

“The tides follow the moon, don’t they?”

Lexa nudges her shoulder. “Like you.”

She shakes her head through a fond smile. For a centuries old vampire, Lexa is also a massive dork.

Still, the jittery grin slips off her face as she nears the shore, the excitement fluttering in her belly becoming heavy, like a weight pulling her under from the inside. It’s beautiful, the way the ocean soaks up the moon in the same way she does. But all that sea is _dark_ and depthless and the closer she gets, enough so the sand beneath hardens, clumps together, the more all that beauty feels like looking over a graveyard.

Lexa was right, though. The moon’s exhausted itself, and in result the waves barely even rise a foot off the ground. Just a lethargic push and pull as if the ocean itself is half-asleep from it being so late in the night. Like you could walk across the still waters and only the soles of your feet would come off wet.

Clarke takes one terrifying step that puts her in the path of the water.

Her bravery only lasts until the next sigh of the waves arrives, and already she’s stumbling back, breathing hard and fast and yep, okay, this _was_ a terrible idea and everything sucks and she’s going to die.

“Hey, _hey_.” Hands settle around her shoulders, and only then does she comprehend she’s backpedalled right into Lexa’s front. Her heart’s thumping so frantically it drowns every other sound out and so, in a blink, Lexa’s dragged them back to the soft and dry sand again and spins her around. She cups her face, making sure Clarke is looking only at her. “It’s okay, darling. It’s okay, _you’re_ okay.”

It takes a minute, but the panic drains from her the longer Lexa keeps repeating soft nothings and stands so close, unwavering. Clarke screws her eyes shut and nods uselessly, and while Lexa trails off upon realising the crisis is averted—when she makes like to pull away, Clarke’s hands shoot up and snare Lexa’s wrist, hold her back. So Lexa stays.

“Okay,” Clarke exhales. Her voice still shakes and she swallows roughly, closes the miniscule distance between them so they’re foreheads press together. “So, I can admit that did not go to plan.”

Lexa doesn’t outwardly _say_ I told you so, but the exasperated _mhm_ relays the sentiment. “Do you want to go back?”

That would definitely be the smart thing. Clarke’s eyes blink open, though, and she twists her neck to watch where the ocean still sweeps out behind them. For as terrifying as that shit is, the artist in her can’t help but linger on just how damn gorgeous it is. Oh, it’ll kill her, alright.

But it’s not like this is the first time she’s been drawn to a killer.

“This end of the beach is nice,” Clarke says, and glances back to meet Lexa’s gaze again.

Lexa frowns, looks around to the stretches of dry sand. “You want to stay.”

Clarke shrugs and ignores the incredulous tone. “Of course. Sit with me?”

For a long moment, Lexa does nothing but stare at her.

All it does is remind Clarke how pretty Lexa’s eyes are.

“ _Fine_. But if the tide rises and pushes up, we’re leaving.”

Clarke grins and kisses her. “Deal,” she mumbles against her mouth, Lexa’s grumpy frown smoothing out the deeper the kiss becomes. By the time Clarke leans back, Lexa trails after her, and the hands that had been cupping her face now tangle in her hair, gripping tight to her hip.

Breaking away from this feels like a war crime, but unfortunately they left the towels in the car and she’s heard enough about the horrors of sand to know that is absolutely a requirement if they’re going to be lounging about here. So they go back and get them, and Lexa even snags the book she’d kept stashed in the glove compartment on the way too.

In the beginning they sit together, watching the ocean. Clarke tucked against Lexa’s front and leaning back into the arms wrapped around her. There are a few half-hearted attempts at conversation, though the words always fade off and instead they merely sink into the silence together, the languid crash of the waves filling up all the gaps. The breeze comes by now and again and occasionally even carries light sprays of the tide over them. It tastes like salt.

Lexa pulls out her book at some point, though doesn’t shift their position. She keeps the book low in Clarke’s lap, reading it from over her shoulder, chin resting on top. The feeling of having almost every part of them pressed together is so perfect she even valiantly resists the urge to be annoying and turn the pages before Lexa’s done with them. No. Like a good, well-functioning person, Clarke keeps her hands firmly to herself.

But there’s little point in fighting your blood. Lexa must know her far too well, because right as Clarke’s arm twitches, one of the hands holding up the book sacrifices itself to slide up to that spot just under the back of Clarke’s jaw and scratches her fingers under there.

It is pure blatant cheating. But her blood is her blood, and it seems no matter what form she’s in, _that_ is the one weak point she’ll never shake off. Her head tips back and her whole body goes limp and Lexa smiles, only to herself, flipping the pages with her thumb on the one hand. The scratching goes on for so long and is so _heavenly_ that exhaustion overwhelms her with no warning. She tries to stop it, but her eyes are drooping through no decision of her own.

Clarke blames the fact she’s half-asleep for the stupid confession that breaks out, unbidden.

“I love you.”

The scratching stops.

Clarke freezes, suddenly a _lot_ more awake and unable to breathe, to move. Virtually every part of her wants to get up and fucking run—but it’s that _almost_ , that new, tiny yet all-encompassing part that’s been growing worse and worse ever since she’d first laid eyes on her. That part of her that wants to do the stupid thing and stay. Hope.

A horrible silence stretches between them. And since they’re still pressed against one another, even Clarke can feel how _Lexa_ is dead still too, how all the muscles in her body tense up.

Slowly, though, Lexa relaxes.

“I love you too,” she admits softly, and, with nothing else, she just kisses the top of Clarke’s head, runs her finger again under the spot along her jaw, and goes back to reading, thumbing the next page.

Ahead of them, the dark underbelly of the sky flushes brighter.

Daybreak will be soon.

-

She’s back in the ring only a year after the mountain escape.

The way it happened, she and Lexa had been in the kitchen making breakfast. Or that had been the _plan_. In reality, it’d ended with Clarke up on the kitchen counter and her legs hooked around Lexa’s waist. Anya genuinely had _the most_ cursed timing that Clarke had ever met in a person, and so it’d been right as Lexa’s hand picked up speed beneath the waistband of Clarke’s shorts, Clarke’s teeth biting down into Lexa’s bare shoulder, groaning loud, her _own_ hand shoved down Lexa’s pants too— _that_ was when the fucking doorbell went off.

“Stop and I’ll kill you,” Clarke gasped, _so close_ only to feel Lexa’s hand slow from the doorbell sounding.

To her credit, Lexa took the threat seriously. Her hand resumed its pace, and she even ripped the other away from where it’d been supporting Clarke’s back, instead slid all the way under Clarke’s shirt, doubling her efforts. The doorbell rang _again_ and Anya’s swearing blared through the whole house, but Clarke couldn’t perceive anything beyond the hot pressure building in her lower stomach.

It was obvious she had a couple seconds left at best, but she was desperate for Lexa to feel it too, so right before she kept messily working her hand between them, with her other she tangled her fingers in of Lexa’s hair and pulled her down towards her neck, tipped her head back.

Lexa understood the offering immediately.

After, Clarke let her sweaty temple fall into the crook of Lexa’s shoulders, taking a beat to even her breathing back down. Lexa did too at her neck, her body almost lax into Clarke’s. This was one of the very few things that Lexa lost her nonexistent breath for. Some reactions the body can’t really forget.

“Should probably let Anya in before she _breaks_ in,” Clarke said at last, breathy and warm.

She could _feel_ Lexa’s smile against her neck. They both savoured another moment together, patiently ignoring Anya’s furious yelling, before Lexa sighed, nodded. “If she’s still yelling, it’s probably quite important,” Lexa admitted, though in contradiction to her words she still wasted the time to run her tongue up the length of Clarke’s neck, licking up any last traces of blood before stepping away.

It took everything in her to allow the retreat.

“I’ll… go through the fridge,” Clarke said. Because she knew that if Lexa didn’t go get the door right now, Anya would have enough time to plan a personalised murder for both of them. Lexa looked about as enthusiastic as her at leaving this, except Anya’s next knock was not so much as a _knock_ as it was her throwing her entire weight into the door.

“ _I’ll_ fucking kill her,” Lexa snarled under her breath, grumpily readjusting adjusting her tank top and track pants before stomping for the front.

Clarke was in the middle of frying some eggs and bacon when the kitchen door opened behind her. She didn’t turn around, more distracted with breaking the eggs into the pan without fucking the yolk up. A smirk still crawled across her mouth at hearing the two argue behind her. Lexa was decidedly _not_ pleased with Anya’s timing or patience, and Anya argued right back that _her_ news she’d brought was far more important than morning sex.

“ _Fine_ ,” Lexa snapped, cutting off Anya’s lengthy retort. With a whole body sigh, Lexa threw her hands up in defeat, leant back into the counter next to Clarke. “What is your news?”

In hindsight, Clarke should’ve known how bad it was by the way Anya hesitated.

“It’s about Titus,” Anya started, and Clarke rolled her eyes to herself, slid the spatula under the last egg.

“Yeah? What did the entitled prick do this time?”

Silence, and then: “I believe he wants to kill Clarke.”

The egg missed the pan.

And that leads to now, where Clarke stands in a forest clearing at midnight, lit metre-tall torches stuck in the ground and making a ring of fire while countless vampires lurk in the dark around her. Worse, even the moon can’t hang linger to offer any comfort. The sky is pitch black with the new moon in full swing. At least nobody is cheering or yelling. Vampires are quiet by nature, the barely there, low chatter a far cry to the screaming she’s used to.

Unfortunately, the quiet means that Lexa’s thundering steps are almost comically loud. All the vampires part like the sea when the Commander comes storming through into the clearing.

“What have you _done_?” Lexa seethes the moment she’s close enough.

This is definitely not one of Clarke’s better ideas.

Still, she straightens up and keeps her voice calm. It’s a bit of role reversal, since Lexa pushes right into her space, almost shaking with fury while Clarke is the one who doesn’t flinch. “Titus distrusts my loyalty to you and believes that your fealty to _me_ comprises you. I’m proving my loyalty and absolving his doubt by invoking Wankoma. Or, you know, more commonly known as beating his ass.”

Lexa falters, her brows twitching together. “What? How do you know about Wankoma? That’s—that’s _ancient_.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Clarke says quickly. _Too_ quickly, since Lexa hears the hidden answer.

“Fucking _Roan_ ,” Lexa spits. Immediately, her head snaps up, eyes scanning the surrounding group in a rapid attempt to track him down herself. But Roan isn’t stupid and is nowhere near. “He had no right to tell you that,” Lexa says, looking back to her. A new desperation is in her eyes, though. Not for anger, but for fear.

Because of it, Clarke softens her voice. “I know. And I _am_ sorry. But I asked him for a way to quiet Titus’ doubts for good, and,” she shrugs, helpless, “he gave a solution. And by how readily he gave it, I suspect that _you_ knew it was an option too. And you didn’t say anything.”

Lexa steps closer so her words are only heard between them. “Because it is an _old_ practice created when we were far more accepting of loss. It’s a fight to the death, Clarke.”

“Exactly. Your type _respects_ old shit. You’re not stupid, Lexa. And neither am I. Titus isn’t the only one with doubts. This is supposed to regain honour in your people’s eyes. This _will_ work.”

“You should have told me,” Lexa says, but her voice loses some of its fire.

Clarke just gives her a sad smile. “You think I didn’t realise you were about to do the exact same thing I’m about to?” Lexa averts her gaze, as close to confirmation as she’ll get. It’s enough. Still, Clarke ducks her head to get back in Lexa’s eyeline. “Hey. Look at me. Now, was I hoping to never fight again? Yeah, of course. But if I must do this one last fucking time, so that we can actually, finally relax and enjoy each other? Then so be it.”

Lexa considers the plea. Then, with a recognisable sigh, she reaches up between the miniscule gap of their bodies and brushes a loose hair back, gently tucking it behind Clarke’s ear. “I wanted it to be me.”

“I know. That’s why I had to beat you to the punch. For once, you’re just gonna have to hold off sacrificing yourself. It’s my turn.”

A muscle flexes in Lexa’s jaw, though she doesn’t object. Instead, much to Clarke’s shock, Lexa leans forward and kisses her. Clarke doesn’t respond at first, confused since Lexa is meant to be furious at her right now—but the feel of Lexa’s mouth sliding against her own has become about as familiar as breathing. She gives in easily, and the moment she does, Lexa whispers her next words right into Clarke’s mouth.

“Do not shift. They’ll view it as dishonourable. He broke his left leg before he turned and favours his right side.”

As sudden as the kiss had begun, Lexa steps back. Clarke blinks, still playing catch up from the hot and cold.

Lexa swallows. And then her face hardens, that stoic mask slipping into place. “You are not allowed to die. I will not let you.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Clarke says, doing her best to summon the usual grin only for it to fall a second later. “I love you. Remember that. I have never loved anyone like I have you.”

Something pained flashes across Lexa’s face. Her eyes widen, and she opens her mouth, though no sound escapes—but Clarke just grits her teeth, nods, and turns around.

From the other end of the circle, Titus spies her approach and steps into the ring too.

He doesn’t look the least bit afraid. Titus shrugs off his cloak and strides over to the centre like he’s already bored with this. Clarke lingers, shooting one last glance to Lexa over her shoulder, before walking up to the middle as well.

“I’ll give you this one mercy, wolf. You will die quick.”

Clarke barks a laugh and shakes her head. “Yeah? What’s mercy ever done for me?”

Titus frowns.

She doesn’t offer him anything else. Soon, a vampire in ceremonial gear steps forward from the sidelines and they’re both directed to move away from each other. All the vampires fall dead silent. The one who’d stepped up is the only sound in the space, and it eases some nameless part of her that when the vampire begins speaking, she sounds nothing like Cage had.

Her voice is strong and commanding and _fair_. This isn’t about money and violence. It’s about reclaiming your name.

“For whoever Death greets,” the vampire finishes with, and steps back to meld into the crowd.

The second she’s gone, Titus flashes the distance between them in a heartbeat.

A while ago Lexa had done the exact same move.

And Clarke remembers.

It’s a long fight. She learns pretty fast that Titus had been very much expecting this as a _short_ one, that almost all the other vampires around them thought so too. It means Clarke feels a vicious sense of satisfaction when she dodges his first flurry of strikes and even slashes a nasty claw across his throat before he lurches back out of range.

He’d reached up for his neck with wide eyes, staring at her but only now _seeing_ her.

The next time he comes at her, there’s a new urgency in his attacks.

Lexa’s advice had been right, though. Titus _does_ favour his right side, and now that she’s focused in on it—she realises it’s because his left is the one with the old broken leg. Most of the fight, Clarke does nothing to show she’s aware of this. As a result, Titus gets a few dangerously heavy shots to her. One even cracks a rib and has her spitting blood.

But she keeps moving. And they stay in this push and pull right until Titus finally, finally gives the exact opening in his guard she’d been holding on for.

Clarke snaps her foot out from behind him and shoves it directly through the back of his left knee. The horrid _snap_ of bone is not near as loud as Titus’ answering scream as he struggles to avoid collapsing into the ground. But Clarke was waiting on this too, and she hooks an arm around his neck on the stumble backward, drags him off his feet to unbalance him.

And with her free hand, shifted partway into claws, shoves her fingers through his back and rips his heart out.

Titus doesn’t even scream for this. He just falls completely into the ground when she releases him, and then he’s curling in on himself, patting uselessly at his chest, gasping and choking. Clarke stares at him, before, after glancing up and ignoring all the disbelieved eyes on her, searches for the ceremonial vampire from the beginning.

She walks up to her and casually throws Titus’ heart into her hands. The vampire catches it, though only just in time.

“If any of you try this bullshit on me again, I won’t be so merciful.” That’s a tiny bit of a lie. It’s not for mercy she spared him—it’s because she’s well aware that a werewolf killing a vampire, even in honourable combat, will _worsen_ matters, not fix. But they don’t need to know that. “Now, I’m going home with my girlfriend. Do whatever you want with his heart. I would suggest killing him now, though, if that’s how you want him. I hear it’s agonising losing your heart.”

The vampire gapes at her, speechless. Scars and bruises crisscross over Clarke’s entire body, but when she tiredly makes her way back to Lexa, all the vampires part for her, don’t say a thing. Lexa looks so relieved she’s going to cry and rushes the distance between them in a second, hugs her so fiercely Clarke can hardly breathe.

“You will never do anything like this ever again,” Lexa hisses into her ear. Clarke knows she’s in deep shit once they get home, but that’s beyond worth it if it means they can relax from here on.

“I love you,” Clarke whispers. 

Lexa holds out for a beat. It’s kinda deserved, so Clarke waits the pointed silence out with a patience she rarely exerts before, with a long exhale through her nose, Lexa kisses the crown of Clarke’s head and repeats the admission back.

-

The next few years are long but good.

The events of the mountain still hover over her neck like a set of teeth, though with each passing day those jaws ease back inch by inch. Sure, she can’t see _any_ type of cage no matter how small without every muscle in her body going tense, but she doesn’t wake up in fits anymore either. Even Lexa doesn’t really leave the bed until Clarke does. Nowadays, _Clarke_ is the one who has to convince her of freedom, Lexa curled up all around her and arms locked tight, refusing to lose even a second of Clarke’s warmth.

A very scary vampire indeed.

Lexa holds true to transform the leftover storage room into a studio. Most of the junk piled up in there were keepsakes and mementos from history. One wall was even decked out with _swords_ and axes and bows. The sheer giddy excitement that had overtaken Clarke in that moment after finding that had led to a very interesting two hours, as she’d just grabbed the coolest weapon she could find with a massive grin and started swinging.

It’s a good thing vampires have incredible reaction times. Eventually, Lexa succeeded in getting the war axe out of her hands and, after Clarke’s pout, sighed but picked a more reasonable sword from the shelves of weapons and handed that over. Those next two hours were spent by Lexa going through and showing the basics of all her favourites while Clarke very studiously watched. And by studiously, she meant she watched the hard muscles of Lexa’s arms and back flex with each swing.

But they clear out the space. At first, the only source of natural light is the skylight above. It cuts prime painting hours to a particular time window, but Clarke has made do with a _lot_ worse that it’s borderline heaven, anyway. Lexa seems to treat the space as something sacred and even with Clarke’s reassuring that it’s more than fine, Lexa never enters the room without prior invitation beforehand. It’s a very vampire problem to have.

When Clarke convinces Lexa into modelling for one, though, it’s _then_ Lexa notices the lack of real light and asks about it. Clarke shrugs and mutters that it’s fine. She can wake up earlier, can bring in some other lamps, no worries. Sure, it messes a bit with the gradient, since different lighting _looks_ different against the canvas, but that’s a small price to pay for having a whole entire room to herself.

Lexa frowns at this, though keeps her thoughts to herself.

The sun’s long gone by the time she finishes. Her wrist aches and dried paint ruins her hands and her shirt and her trackies, but her soul calms like nothing else when she leans back on her stool, looks over her work with sharp eyes. Out of all the things she missed most down in that shit hole, _this_ sits almost right at the top. It’s been so long.

“Are you finished?” Lexa asks into the quiet.

Clarke blinks, like coming out of a daze. Her gaze slides over to where Lexa sprawls over the couch, a book in her hand with one of her knees propped up. In the beginning the sun had glowed perfectly on the back of her head, lit her hair up like a halo. There’s no forgetting a sight like that.

“Think so,” Clarke says. Her back is stiff from sitting so long and she rolls her shoulders, stretches out her spine with a satisfied groan and a series of clicks. “I kinda want to fix it up a bit more, but that’s usually a sign to stop and leave it be. I’ll be here forever otherwise.”

Lexa slides the bookmark to its new place and shuts the book, swings her legs off the couch. “Am I allowed to see?”

Clarke hesitates, though. Lexa slows her approach from seeing it, stopping before she can make around the easel.

“Not that I mean to pressure,” Lexa amends quickly. “I more than understand. If you want, I can just—”

Clarke just laughs. “Lexa, stop, it’s fine.” She gives her an easy smile, the stiff line of her shoulders softening at seeing Lexa so genuinely nervous. There is little that Clarke trusts anymore in this world. Majority of her life experiences have taught her to never trust a damn thing, that everything is always just a couple inches off the table edge.

But this is Lexa.

So Clarke waves her over, and _Lexa_ hesitates, before finally obeying and walking around. When she settles next to her, Clarke wraps her arm around her girlfriend’s waist, lets her head tip into Lexa’s hip. Gentle fingers comb through Clarke’s hair. It’s the sort of sensation you fall asleep to.

“This is good,” Lexa says quietly. Clarke’s eyes had been drooping from Lexa playing with her hair, but they push open at hearing how _serious_ Lexa is. This isn’t light praise. “As in, professionally good. Did you go to school for this?”

Clarke huffs a laugh. “I’m a werewolf. Was a bit more concerned with not getting hunted down.”

Lexa hums, stays silent. Her fingers keep running all through Clarke’s hair and Clarke grins sleepily for it, turning her face into Lexa’s side and pushing her free hand up Lexa’s stomach to lift her shirt, presses lazy kisses all up the cool skin, digs her nails over the ridges of her abs.

“I’m being serious,” Lexa says, and while she doesn’t have any _breath_ left to lose, there’s a new strain to her voice that’s undeniable. “You could follow this.”

“Mhm.” Clarke’s hand rises further under Lexa’s shirt. The mindless pace of her kisses change too, become more about running the wet heat of her tongue, skimming her teeth over Lexa’s hipbone. Lexa’s fingers freeze in Clarke’s hair, scrunch together. “I’ve got an idea of what we can follow.”

It’s honestly impressive how much Lexa resists the ministrations. Especially since Clarke can smell Lexa’s growing arousal. Lexa just forces in a useless breath and pushes on through the assault. “There’s—I know someone. Old vampire. He’s a curator. If you wanted, I could have him, uh, have him look over some of your works.”

Clarke had been in the middle of urging Lexa to face her so she wouldn’t have to work the awkward angle anymore, but the moment she comprehends what Lexa is saying she stops. Slowly, she pulls away completely from her and looks up. Lexa’s brow furrows, her mouth still parted open, the green of her iris almost fully swallowed by inflated pupils.

“I don’t want handouts,” Clarke says through a frown.

But Lexa falls serious too. “It’s not a handout. He will only bother with you if you’re good. I’ve recommended people before and he’s walked away. He takes _talent_ , not charity.”

Clarke keeps staring at her, though the tension in her shoulders eases slightly. “If he’s so selective, what chance do I have?”

“Work hard and we can see,” Lexa shrugs.

She looks back to the painting. The scene is of Lexa reading her book, reclined back into the couch sat alone in a grass field. Behind her the world is burning, though. The sky red and bleeding and full of smoke. And the further back it pushes, the more haphazard and messier the strokes become, the previous fine, detailed strokes of the foreground blurring together in the back.

It was the only visual way she could think to describe the experience. How time felt in the mountain. How each day and night was ignoring everybody else’s screams in the frail hope you’ll finally get some sleep if you did, that you wouldn’t lose your mind. Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend she’d only been down there two months when those were some of the longest months of her life.

Maybe she could make something _better_ out of it, though.

That was a while ago. For Clarke’s birthday, Lexa had one of the walls in the studio fitted out with tall north-facing windows. For _Lexa’s_ birthday Clarke got a bunch of body paint, laid a massive tarp out over the studio floor, and let Lexa do whatever she wanted. Little real painting was actually done.

They’re coming back from their two-year anniversary dinner. A double celebration, really, because the dinner was also to celebrate that art curator _finally_ deciding she’s worth it after two years of work. They’re both stumbling out of the car blindly, Lexa kissing and running her hands over any inch of Clarke’s body she can reach and making it borderline impossible to walk. The night is dark and cold and Lexa has her backed against the car door. Clarke only barely keeps up with the rough ferocity of Lexa’s mouth, and Lexa bites and licks her way down to Clarke’s neck, slotting her leg between Clarke’s thighs and rocking into her when Clarke sees it over Lexa’s shoulder.

It’s only one glance, the brief opening her eyes as she tries to find Lexa’s mouth again.

She sees _it_ and everything stops.

“Stop,” Clarke gasps, her hands ripping back from where they’d been shamelessly hugging Lexa’s ass, instead push back on Lexa’s shoulders.

Lexa pulls away instantly, even if she looks like she would honestly rather stand in open sunlight than stop. To be fair, though, when Lexa drops her knee and steps back, Clarke can’t bite off the displeased groan in time. “What? Are you okay? Did I—”

“Tell me you see that,” Clarke says, her voice shaking.

Lexa frowns and glances behind her to where Clarke is staring. There’s a long pause where now _Lexa is the one_ blinking slowly, no idea what to do with what she's seeing. “I… can see a cat on our doorstep, yes?”

“That’s a tabby. A grey _tabby_.”

Lexa’s eyes snap back to meet hers. “Clarke, no. There is no way that’s your old cat. It’s probably just wandering through.”

“Cats can find their way back eventually,” Clarke says, not even looking to Lexa as she walks right around her, keeping her pace slow and her hands open so as not to spook the beast. Lexa sighs from behind her and quietly begins banging her head into the car window.

The cat doesn’t move from where it’s sitting on the porch. It sits all regal and paws neatly arranged in front of it, but at Clarke’s approach the cat meows like it’s trying to suss her out, and it’s a meow that Clarke _recognises_ right down to the distinctive pitch and she’s already beaming when the cat gracefully leaps off the porch and sprints right towards her.

There’s no time to react before the cat jumps and claws its way up her dress until it’s in her arms, meowing on endless loop like crazy, rubbing its head all over her chin and purring so loud it’s like there’s an engine in her hands. But what marks the final straw is when Clarke buries her nose into the cat’s fur and searches for its scent.

Exactly the same.

“You found me!” Clarke laughs. Tears blur her vision, but she settles her hands under her cat’s front legs and holds her out so she can _look_ at her. “And you’ve gotten so big! Look at you! I never stopped looking for you, baby. _Never_. You know that, right? I thought about you every fucking day.”

Her cat meows and paws at her until Clarke pulls her back into her arms.

“I missed you so fucking much,” Clarke sighs, and, because she knows how much her cat loves it, she turns her over in her arms until she’s on her back and cradles her like a baby. It’s the perfect position to scratch all over her fluffy belly.

When Clarke finally turns around, she glances up to find Lexa just… staring at her.

“She came back!” Clarke enthuses, still jittery with the revelation.

“What? _What?_ ”

“Jeremy,” she explains, like the name is what Lexa is unable to understand. “And before you get confused, Jeremy is the only name she responds to. I don’t know why. Cats, y’know?”

“What?”

“Do you want to hold her?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Okayyy,” Clarke drawls, and when Jeremy becomes restless in her arms, she dutifully twists her back over and lets her jump to the ground. “I think we broke her,” she continues at a whisper. Jeremy winds happily between her ankles, brushing against her legs. Her beaming grin never wavers. “You must be so hungry. Been chasing me down, haven’t you? I love you.”

She easily picks Jeremy up and carries her into the house.

Lexa stares after her, standing there in a complete loss.

Jeremy’s consequent adoption into the household deeply confuses Lexa right from the beginning. But after now having two _years_ with the new addition, it’s almost amusing how much Lexa has fallen in love with their cat while downright refusing to admit this. Clarke has walked in on Lexa’s office only to find Jeremy slung around Lexa’s shoulders and purring happily, and Lexa will look her Clarke dead in the eye and maintain that she doesn’t have any affection for the animal. She will say this while said cat drools on her shirt.

It’s a good few years. Probably the best that Clarke has ever had, really.

Which is why it’s so weird when Lexa starts pulling away from her.

Lexa becomes nervous. And not _minor_ nerves, either. These are the sort of nerves that don’t let her sleep. They still fall into bed together, and initially Clarke picks up on the anxiety instantly, can _smell_ the tension wafting off Lexa in waves, but even her attempts to relieve that tension by crawling down her body don’t really work. For two weeks, Lexa is this bundle of pure anxiety shaped vaguely as a person and it worries Clarke because Lexa won’t say _why_.

Any attempt to get her to open up on what’s holding her lead to nowhere. Every time, Lexa just smiles tightly and relays that’s it nothing to worry over. The words do the opposite in reassuring her. Last time she was told it was nothing, Finn sold her out and she’d walked away with blood on her hands.

They’ve been together for four years now. Clarke knows Lexa would never do something like that. She wouldn’t. She can’t.

Clarke stops sleeping too.

She shifts, instead. Runs through the woods and lets the dark swallow her.

And it all culminates until one night where she realises she can’t _take_ this anymore, can’t handle this constant dancing around each other like they’re hanging from a cliff and running out of rope. The decision hits somewhere when she’s racing mindless laps in the forest just to think.

This isn’t _them_ , what they’re doing. Lexa has always been her safe haven. There is no one else in her life who she can bare her entire soul to and feel no fear. It’s deeper than trust at this point. It’s solace, peace. They know better than this. So Clarke twists her neck around, abandons the last stupid lap and sprints back home so fast the wind is a drum in her ears.

The way back is so familiar her body runs on autopilot. It leaves her mind free to wander, and more importantly, to plan out exactly what she’s going to say. Though to be fair that doesn’t really work out, either. At least she manages to talk herself down from straight up kicking down the door, pinning Lexa down, and demanding _why_. Would it be effective? Probably.

But it’d better to treat Lexa with even the tiniest ounces of faith and respect.

No, they’re going to talk about this like two rational adults even if fucking kills them.

Clarke slows her pace down to a lope as their house comes into view. None of the lights inside on. The _only_ light on is the porch light, and since Clarke definitely didn’t switch that on the way out, that means that Lexa had put the light on for her. So she doesn’t have to change clothes in the dark. Worse, when she pads up the porch stairs, still breathing hard from sprinting for so long, her tongue lolling out of her muzzle, her eyes drift up to see a fresh and clean pile of clothes waiting for her on the chair.

She’s making it very difficult to stay mad at her.

But she’s on a _mission_ here. Clarke shifts back up to two legs with a quiet groan, flexing her jaw and feeling it pop. With all the shifting she’s been doing recently, it’s a wonder she doesn’t accidently wolf out in her sleep. Still, it’s an easy thing to step through the loose sweatpants and pull on the tank top. Her movements slow, though. At finding the flannel shirt laying underneath the pile. Even from here, the scent of Lexa clinging to the material is like a beacon.

So maybe Lexa has noticed that Clarke only steals her clothes that Lexa herself has already worn for a while.

“I’m still mad,” Clarke mutters, frowning to make herself believe it, but her hands are reaching automatically to throw on Lexa’s shirt. There’s no point in fighting your nature.

A cursory glance of the house shows no sign of Lexa. Only when Clarke fully engages her senses to track her does she succeed, something tugging her towards the basement where, despite Clarke very much set on being pissed right now, it feels like a step too far to just barge into Lexa’s sanctuary downstairs. So she cheats, and simply presses her ear to the door, closes her eyes and focuses her hearing.

Enough soundproofing is packed into the walls down there that the sound is very, very muffled. She can only hear it because she’s _trying_ to hear it. But nonetheless the sound remains. That gentle piano.

Clarke sighs and steps back.

Quietly, she raps her knuckles against the door. The music cuts out at once, startled, but Clarke doesn’t move for a lengthy beat until Lexa calls out to her so she can come in. Lexa told her the code a long while ago, so Clarke just punches the numbers in and makes her way down. Her fingers are already gliding over the keys again, so relaxed and confident that it almost doesn’t look like she’s even pressing them, like they’re floating, an echo of a thought.

Jeremy is dozing next to her on the piano stool. She’s flat on her back, tail swaying lazily over the chair edge, eyes closed and just completely blissed out from the music and Lexa’s presence and occasional scritches. The moment Clarke comes into the room, though, Jeremy jumps awake. She twists over onto her front, meows loudly at seeing Clarke and then leaps off, runs right up to her with her tail up high. And because she can’t resist, she reaches down and picks her cat up so she can greet her properly.

This is absolutely not going to plan.

“I’m mad at you,” Clarke blurts, breaking the gentle peace that’d been in the room.

Lexa stops playing right in the middle of a chord, looks back to her with wide eyes.

Clarke holds her stare steadily. Though, it’s kinda hard to look intimidating when a cat is currently in the process of climbing up along your shoulders, so she can loop herself around the back of your neck and settle happily there. Her glare doesn’t falter, not even when Jeremy starts kneading her paws into Clarke’s shoulder. Honestly, it’s like the cat is actively trying to sabotage her at this point.

“You’re upset with me?” Lexa repeats. Her voice sounds confused, but also wrung with that new tension that’s the whole _reason_ they’re in this mess—that fear, the one that shouldn’t be there.

“Something is wrong and you won’t tell me.” Lexa frowns and opens her mouth, but Clarke is already cutting her off before she can start with her lip snarling up. “ _And_ , I fucking swear, Lexa, if you tell me one more time that nothing is wrong when something very clearly is then I am walking out this door and I’m not coming back until you finally decide to fucking talk to me. You know, like people in relationships do? _Communicate_?”

Lexa’s mouth snaps shut. They stare at each other, waiting the other out, but Lexa still looks at a loss and Clarke realises the hard approach isn’t working. She stops and rubs her hands over her face, forcing in a sigh before just coming forward and saying what she ran here for.

“I know you’re hiding something, alright? And yeah, I absolutely respect your privacy and you’re entitled to that—but what I can’t take is when whatever you’re doing is something that comes between us. Like, if you’re pulling away from me because of… something I did, or said, or even if it’s ‘cause something has gone wrong with your people and you’re stressed out from that—that’s fine. Please. I get that. But can you please just tell me _something_ about what it is because I’m going sort of insane here.” Her voice cracks near the end, days of sleepless nights and cold shoulders overwhelming all at once. “Because it hurts. What we’re doing. It hurts.”

Lexa is up on her feet in a second. “I never wanted to hurt you,” she says in a rush, like she _needs_ Clarke to believe it. All Clarke does is stare at her, though. Waiting. Lexa freezes, realising the gravity of this, and like that the decision seems made within her. A new resolve takes over Lexa’s face. “Okay. Okay, I… really, _really_ didn’t want to do it like this, and I’m sorry for hurting you, I just… I wanted to do it right. Because it’s _you_. But once she finally got back to me and I had it in my hands, I realised that I actually… don’t know how to do this.”

Clarke blinks at her, barely able to keep up with the avalanche of words. “ _Woah_ , okay, baby—” She crosses the distance in a heartbeat, forgetting her anger at seeing Lexa is such open distress. Jeremy meows in protest at the abrupt movement but Clarke ignores her. “Hey, I love you, okay? I do. And I know you love me. You wouldn’t always leave the lights on for me outside otherwise.”

“It gets dark at night. I worry,” Lexa mumbles.

“I know,” Clarke sighs through a soft smile. Gently, she nudges her fingers against Lexa’s own hanging by her side. Seconds later and Lexa entwines their hands with one another. A knotted muscle in Lexa’s shoulders goes lax at the touch.

She stares down at their joined hands like she’s trying to hype herself up.

Clarke can’t tell if this makes her more and less nervous.

“I wanted to do this right. But I think I was trying so hard that I did it wrong. I never wanted to hurt you over this. I mean, if anything I—” Lexa stops, cuts herself off. Then, frowning, she looks back to Clarke with a firm nod to herself. “Okay. Wait here, please. I’ll be back in a second.”

True to her word, Lexa flashes out the room and returns moments later. It happens so fast Clarke steps backwards like she’d somehow forgotten her girlfriend is a vampire. But Lexa comes back and looks about a _million_ times more anxious, so much so the anxiety jumps into Clarke too and has her heart kicking up badly in her chest.

“Lexa, what…”

“I was trying to plan a whole day for this. A restaurant, a dinner. A walk up to that spot in the woods you like, where it’s up on that hill and you can see over the entire town and all the stars. I was even in the middle of writing a song, but, I just kept getting so _scared_ , and…” Lexa lets out this sad sort of laugh, shrugs. “Maybe now I realise I was giving myself excuses. To build up to it, instead of _doing_ it.”

And then, after one last second of hesitation, Lexa just swallows thickly and uses her free hand to dig into her pocket, and pulls out a ring.

Every muscle in her body tenses up like she’s been struck by lightning.

Her eyes snap up to Lexa’s, and at seeing how Lexa makes like to full on get down on one fucking knee Clarke’s hand surges out to grab Lexa’s wrist where they still haven’t let go of each other, squeezing so tight it probably hurts.

“You can’t do this,” Clarke rushes out, and has to ignore the horrible spasm of pain around her heart when Lexa looks up to her like she’s just killed her. “No, _no,_ I’m sorry, I mean—fuck, no, it’s just… you’re immortal. You’re _immortal_ and I’m not. You can’t do this to me. You can’t fucking play with me like this when you’ll just leave me in the end because I’m gonna die and grow old and look like shit and you won’t—”

“This isn’t a joke,” Lexa says quickly. Her eyes spike with heat and there’s this stupid, pathetic wet lump blocking her throat, but Clarke shuts up at Lexa’s interruption. At seeing how serious she is. How _real_. “I know, my angel. I know. That’s why I took so long. Before I did anything, _planned_ anything, I needed to make sure it worked.”

Clarke frowns, blinking rapidly to rid the tears. “What do you mean?”

It soon becomes obvious Lexa didn’t plan to get this far with no script. Though, that’s not so unusual for them. How one thing always goes wrong after the other. “A few weeks ago, I got contact from a witch. It was the same one who’d been in the mountain with me, the one that was forced into spelling our cages. She’d found me through one of your art shows and recognised my face.”

“Okay?” Clarke says, still thoroughly confused. It doesn’t help that she can’t stop herself from glancing to the ring in Lexa’s hands. For obvious reasons, the band is definitely not silver. But it’s also clearly not gold, either. The metal looks dark and hand-carved. No diamonds, no jewels. Organic and elegant and loved.

Her hands won’t stop shaking.

Lexa pushes on nonetheless, nodding to herself despite the fact she looks scared shitless right now. “She’s—she’s an old witch. Powerful. That’s how the mountain even found out about her. And she told me how much she hated what she did, what she _had_ to do. And then she asked me if there was a way to repay that debt.”

Lexa’s eyes drop to the ring too. She twists it nervously between her fingers. With one last steadying breath, she lets go of their joined hands, pries off Clarke’s fingers still clamped around her wrist, and goes down onto one knee.

“I want you to marry me,” Lexa says, staring right up at her like nothing else around them exists. “And I want you to live alongside me. As an immortal.”

For some reason, only at this point does Clarke remember a moment that had happened awhile ago that she’d written off, treated as nothing. They’d been lying together on the couch with Clarke sprawled all on top of her and tucked below Lexa’s chin. Netflix had long finished and TV was sleeping, the room so dark and warm that Clarke was already half-under, her eyes drooping closed with the feel of Lexa’s fingers tiredly running through her hair and her other hand tracing circles over the small of the back under her shirt.

In the night so quiet, Lexa had spoken up. Hesitant like she almost didn’t want to.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Mhm.”

“Is it true?”

“More specific,” Clarke murmured, so close to sleep she could barely muster the energy to even move her mouth.

Still, she was close enough and so attuned to Lexa’s body that she could _hear_ it when Lexa swallowed. “Wolves mate for life, don’t they? Real wolves, I mean. Natural wolves.” Silence stretched out in space for an answer, so Clarke just hummed, showing she agreed. Somehow, this seemed to make Lexa _more_ nervous. “Right. But is… is it the same for your kind? For werewolves?”

In hindsight, this should have been a massive red flag. But in that moment, buried so deep under the night, all Clarke had done was laugh sleepily and tilted her head up to kiss Lexa’s throat, muttered, “Oh, you’re stuck with me, alright.” And then fell asleep.

She really should have known. Especially since _she’s_ been thinking about it too. But any thoughts like that always got shot down, knowing there’s no point in entertaining a future with someone that’ll inevitably leave her when the time comes.

“Immortal?” Clarke repeats uselessly, can’t even get her brain to work. Everything feels like it’s spinning and she has to reach up and nudge Jeremy, get her off her shoulders. Jeremy meows grumpily in protest, though still jumps for the floor.

“The ring is spelled,” Lexa continues. “If… you put it on, then you will cease to age. And you would remain that way unless it’s destroyed.”

 _That_ brings her right back. Immorality never comes without a price, a trade-off. Magic like that is ancient and feared for a reason. And that reason usually always ends up paid in blood. “How… how does it do this? Because magic like this is…”

Weirdly, Lexa averts her gaze for this, the ring lowering slightly in her hands. “Uh, no, the… the ring doesn’t create its own power. It's more that…” Lexa trails off, until at last she exhales and forces herself to meet Clarke’s eyes, knowing she can’t be a coward about this. “It links you. With my life. So the ring doesn’t _create_ power, but merely… channels it.”

“Links,” Clarke says, her heart pounding so fast her chest feels numb. “So you’re saying we’d be… linked?”

Lexa looks like she wants to run right out of the room. She doesn’t, though. Just grits her teeth but remains there, ready to burn alive. “Our lifelines would be. It would only be broken if the ring were destroyed, or…”

“Or if you died,” Clarke finishes quietly.

Lexa gives her a soft smile. “What’s eternity worth if you’re alone?”

At that, Clarke inhales sharply, because those words are _familiar_ and it feels impossible that Lexa would remember such a minor thing from years ago. But Lexa keeps talking anyway, her voice measured and even as if she’s rehearsed this a hundred times over.

“I want you, Clarke. I want us. For the centuries that I have lived, there is nothing in comparison to you. We might have met in the depths of hell, and I have suffered greatly for it, but there is no hesitation in me: I would do it all over again if only to ensure I find you. And I know…” Lexa pauses here, frowning slightly. “I know that eternity is a long time. This is not a light decision, and not one you can easily rescind. But if you would have me, and if you would deem the choice worthy, then I would like to spend forever with you.”

Clarke doesn’t speak for a long while. She keeps _trying_ , but her throat closes up every time and it’s getting harder and harder to see through her blurry vision. But Lexa has always been too fucking good at reading and _knowing_ her. Nobody has ever understood like Lexa has.

“You don’t need to answer now. I’ll wait however long you need. Whether you accept this or not, I—”

Clarke finally gets her voice working, cuts Lexa off midway. “What happens if I say no?”

Lexa visibly flinches, though it’s obvious she tries to hide the reaction. “I will not leave you.”

“But it would never work out between us, would it?” Clarke goes on, at last voicing the unsaid that’s been lingering in the air between them for years.

Lexa holds her eyes. “I will not leave you.”

This next part is even harder to voice. “And what happens if I say yes?”

“Then you take the ring. And, you know. Maybe we go somewhere fancy for dinner.”

Clarke laughs, even if her chest feels like it’s cracking open. “You’re such a dork.”

“Your dork,” Lexa says through a smile.

The break in tension doesn’t last long. Lexa is still very much on her knees and Clarke doesn’t know what to do. She knows what she _wants_ —but want hasn’t always landed her in the best of situations. Like always, Lexa is right. This can’t be impulsive. Taking that ring means watching the people _she_ loves die from old age. It’s years and decades and centuries of grief.

Of love, too.

She licks her lips. Clenches her hands. “I’ll think about it,” Clarke says at last. “But can… is it alright if I hold on to it? The ring?”

Lexa is already nodding before she’s finished speaking. It takes a moment, where she doesn’t fully get up until Clarke reaches down for her and helps pull her up. So gently, Lexa turns over Clarke’s hand and places the ring right in the centre of her palm. Then she folds Clarke’s fingers over so she can bring the closed fist up to her mouth and kiss the knuckles.

It’s so hard not to damn everything right there.

She opens her hand, though. Looks over the ring and spins the band between her fingers. So close, an untameable smile tugs at her mouth despite her nerves at finding that the front of the ring is carved into a particular shape. A shape that looks a whole lot familiar.

“You had them carve a wolf head into it?”

“I carved it.”

Her smile drops and Clarke’s eyes snap up, latch on to Lexa’s. “ _You_ carved it?”

Lexa shifts awkwardly on her feet. “I forged the ring. The witch spelled it.”

“Oh,” Clarke says, and tries very hard not to cry.

It’s a failed effort.

Lexa inches closer on instinct at seeing the tears, her hand reaching out like always to comfort her, pull her close. But Clarke just forces a wet laugh and sidesteps this.

“It’s fine, I’m fine. Sorry. I’m being stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” Lexa counters with way more conviction than is really necessary.

She doesn’t trust her voice anymore, so instead Clarke slips the ring into her pocket and pulls Lexa in by the neck into a hard kiss. Lexa makes a noise, surprised from the abrupt assault, but it’s not long before she’s pushing back into her with equal fervour. And they lose themselves in each other.

But she never loses the ring.

-

Things get weird between them after that, admittedly. Lexa doesn’t push her for it, though. That same old patience never wavers and at this point Clarke can’t even decide if it’s worse or not that Lexa is so _calm_ about the whole thing. She keeps acting like time has no effect on them, like whether it takes Clarke a day to choose or years it won’t matter.

They go by their days as normal and Lexa complains about the bout of the rain that’s taken up the week and Clarke counters that rain is a _good_ thing and they make coffee for each other and sleep and go on and act like nothing’s changed.

But the entire time Clarke can feel that ring burning a hole through her pocket. And any time she’s alone, and it’s just her, sitting in her studio with the rain streaming down the windows, drowning out all other sound, she’s just _there_ , spinning the band between her fingers, thumbing over the wolf’s head, tracing its iron snout with her nail.

Immortality itself condensed down to a couple inches of metal.

The one time that Clarke had brought up Lexa’s proposal into the open, it’d been in the kitchen and they were making dinner. Vampires run off blood as a life source, but they _can_ eat if they want. It just takes them far longer to metabolise and they’ll gain no nutrients, no energy. Their body at heart is still human.

Most days, Clarke eats and Lexa doesn’t. But it’s nice to sit down together once in a while and make a thing of it even if it almost always ends with Clarke stealing half the contents off Lexa’s plate. Lexa doesn’t even need to eat and yet, on principle, still shoots fond exasperated looks and swats Clarke’s hands away. God forbid if Lexa ever takes her eyes off from the plate—that’s fair game. At least in Clarke’s mind it is.

It’s only a crime if you’re caught.

This night, though, they’re both cooking together. Lexa’s on meats and Clarke’s on vegetables. _Initially_ , the roles had been the other way around, but Lexa had caught Clarke eyeing the raw steaks a little too hard and stepped in so they actually had something to eat by the end of this. Bit rude, but whatever.

Thing is, while cutting the garlic, a thought had hit. Because, like always, Lexa’s ring was a cinderblock in her pocket, but while chopping vegetables there brought the notion of what it would feel like if that ring was on her _finger_ , not tucked away. If the knife would knock into the ring. If that anytime she wanted to use her hand properly, she’d have to take it off.

Or, you know.

That other thing werewolves are known for.

“How am I going to wear it?” Clarke asks through a frown. She doesn’t look away from the chopping board, since she’s quite fond of her fingers and would prefer them very much connected to her knuckles.

Lexa is quiet, though. There’s this beat of heavy silence, like she has to control herself to answer. Neither of them has brought up _anything_ related to the proposal since Lexa’d gone down on one knee a week ago. “Do you mean the ring?”

“I’m… not good with jewellery. None of my kind are. The only one I have is my dad’s watch, and even that I don’t wear at night just in case. So… even if I said yes, I probably wouldn’t be able to wear it.”

No answer. Lexa chucks the steaks on to sear, lets the frying take up the silence. It smells so good that Clarke has to physically stop herself from turning around. She’s only just finished mincing the garlic, has peeled back the onion and is readying her knife when Lexa clears her throat.

“I did think about that. If, uh, if you say yes, I… had the witch help with something else too. It’s in our bedroom, so I can show if you would want to _see_ it, but—essentially, it’s a necklace you can thread the ring through. And the string has magic in it that ensures it’ll never fall off. So even if you shifted, the necklace would stretch out with you, and would pull _back_ with you too as human. So it would never fall off unless you took it off yourself.”

Clarke is endlessly thankful they still have their backs to each other, since this way she can blame the tears in her eyes from the onions.

The days push on and suddenly she’s waited one week and then two and then three. And Clarke becomes a total hypocrite, because she’d gone so hard on Lexa for pulling away from her about this and yet, _now_ Clarke is the one who’s doing the exact same. She gets it now, though. That she can admit. She still remembers those nights of the silver poisoning burning and destroying her from the inside out but that’s fucking _nothing_ compared to lying in bed with Lexa the one asleep and Clarke the one memorising the cut of her soft face.

Times like those, she can never restrain herself from fishing the ring into her hands. She’ll lie there on her back and hold the ring up and watch the moonlight glint off the dark metal. It’s hypnotic in the worst way. Like watching an eclipse with naked eyes. At some point she’s going to look upon the ring and it’ll leave her blind. As punishment, maybe. For not knowing when to turn away.

So, it probably shouldn’t come as such a surprise that after weeks of being trapped with her own thoughts and no way to relieve them, Clarke finally has _enough_ and caves under the weight. She lets Lexa know she’ll be away for a few days, and Lexa nods and tells her she might be busy too on account of council business.

Lexa has had a lot of council business these days. They both know the reason being she’s throwing herself into work as a distraction.

But Clarke doesn’t give a fight, and with one last, slow kiss, she grabs her keys, swings a night bag over her shoulder, and gets into her car alone.

Her mom blinks in shock when Clarke turns up on her doorstep unannounced.

“Lexa proposed to me,” Clarke says without preamble, and Abby’s initial surprised smile at seeing her daughter drops in a second.

“She proposed,” Abby repeats, slowly, like she’s trying to figure out what to do with the words. While Abby has never once been _outright_ distrustful of Lexa, there’s always been something hovering beneath the surface. Because relationships rarely end well when only one side of the table will see a gravestone. And her mother isn’t blind, has _seen_ the way they are with each other, knows there’s no way this will end with her daughter’s heart in one piece.

Clarke swallows, though. “And she wants to make me immortal.”

“Get inside,” Abby says, not even the hint of a smile on her mouth.

She does.

-

Her mother doesn’t live on her own anymore.

For a while now, a werewolf named Marcus has moved in with her. They loved each other, were _in_ love, but Clarke has never exactly been the best with letting shit go, and being alone in a room with him is always unbearably awkward until someone else comes in. As much as the truth pains her, though, he _is_ a decent guy. When Abby sweeps into the house with a nervous Clarke trailing at her heels, he doesn’t even question her when she asks if they can be alone.

He only takes one glance between them, and when Clarke deliberately avoids his eyes, Marcus understands the unsaid like that. “You know, I’ve been meaning to do some shopping today,” he says through a gentle smile. Abby’s shoulders slack in relief, and Marcus stops by her, offering a kiss to her cheek before moving towards Clarke and then freezing, hesitating.

Now Clarke does look at him. And it is very much a _I dare you to be fatherly with me_ sort of look.

Since Marcus isn’t an idiot, he simply nods to her and keeps walking.

They end up in the living room on opposite sides of the couch. Both of them have tea in their hands, since Abby offered, but Clarke’s has long gone cold and she’s pretty sure her mother’s has too. Neither of them really care about the tea. It’s just nicer to have something in their hands to spin around.

Abby listens attentively to everything. Keeps quiet, eyes on her, nods when she’s meant to. Only once Clarke has gotten to the end of things, finished retelling Lexa’s proposal and all that led up to it, that’s when—with a deep, slow breath—she reaches into her pocket and pulls out the ring.

It feels so familiar in her hands now. She hasn’t shifted for days for the sole reason that she can’t carry the piece with her if she does. Not without asking for the necklace, but that’s the same as saying yes, so that choice is out the window.

Clarke holds the ring out between them. Abby’s eyes zero in on it, and despite the tension choking the whole room dead, a quiet smile flits across her mother’s mouth at seeing the wolf head. How she looks back over to Clarke with her eyebrow ticking up in amusement.

“I know,” Clarke says, shaking her head. There’s no stopping that same warmth filling up her chest when looking down at the ring, though. Ever since Lexa told her she _made_ it herself, all Clarke has been able to think about is the image of Lexa in a blacksmith somewhere. Hair pulled back into a bun on top of her head so nothing can accidently catch on. Moulding and temping the white-hot iron. Sitting so hunched over herself to get it right, not mess this up.

Was there a pile of rejects somewhere? Failed attempts? Would it be worse or better if this was the first go, the end all be all?

“Can I…?”

Clarke glances up and sees Abby pointing with her eyes to the ring. For a second she hesitates, and it’s only once a lengthy beat has passed before Clarke forces herself to hand it over. Maybe it’s stupid, but that ring has _very_ rarely ever left her person these past weeks.

“Don’t put it on,” Clarke warns, watching Abby turn the ring over in her hands, thumbing the wolf’s head too. At her words, she glances up. “Lexa said that’s how the spell activates. After that, even if you take it off, the spell won’t stop. Kinda irreversible.”

Abby looks mildly insulted. “I’m not going to put on your _engagement_ ring, Clarke.”

Oh, god.

She didn’t even _think_ about the wedding that would come out from this. Like, an actual _wedding_ wedding. Werewolves don’t care for that sort of thing, see—the whole mate business being a more quiet affair, personal. You find your person and that’s that. Nobody really wears rings and maybe you’ll call the family over to the house and pass around a fair few drinks, but that’s mostly it.

But this is Lexa. This is the Commander of all North American vampires.

No way the wedding will be fucking _small_.

Abby seems to follow that same train of thought too.

“What about that man? Titus? Her people didn’t react well to you the last time you came with an announcement.”

Clarke sighs at the hard edge to her voice. No matter what she says, it’s become clear that no amount of cajoling will ever really sway her mother to trust vampires. The whole incident with Titus being a major douse of gasoline to that fire, not a bucket of water.

“He’s actually been pretty good since the fight,” Clarke says, politely sidestepping Abby’s tone. She even shrugs. “I think he’s a bit scared of me now. Plus, now most of the vamps don’t really fuck with me either, ‘cause I spared him when he could have died for his bullshit reason. They’ve all lost so much already, you know? They all leave me alone since I didn’t add to that. Gustus even said that it,” she holds up her fingers and mimes air quotes, “‘showed respect to Lexa and her beliefs’. See? I’m smart.”

A bout of long silence. It’s not an _easy_ one, but it’s not really uncomfortable either. Just swings somewhere in the in-between.

Finally, Abby hands the ring back to her. Clarke takes it back fast, already uneasy about having it away from her for more than a minute.

“Why are you here, sweetheart?”

Clarke blinks. “What?”

Abby only shrugs. “You’ve spent this last hour telling me every reason why you want to say yes. You keep saying that her people would accept this, so you don’t even have to worry like you two did last time. And the _one_ thing that has always stood between you two—her eternal life—she’s now given you a solution to this. So, just, let me ask you this: if she _wasn’t_ a vampire, and she was human, what would you say?”

She can’t hold her eyes anymore and drops her gaze to the ring. There’s no question in what her answer would be, no hesitation.

But she has to say this.

“Immortality is a long time,” Clarke admits. She spins the ring in circles. Doesn’t ever glance away from it. “And I love her. I do. I love her so fucking much. She’s all I think about and she’s all I want. I’ve never felt this way in my life before, and honestly, I’m not sure if I ever could with someone else. But, even with all that—with _everything_ we’ve gone through—eternity is so fucking long. What if we lose it? What we have with each other? What if it’s a hundred years from now and I can’t even look at her face anymore?”

Abby huffs a laugh and throws out a hand hopelessly. “Honey, _anything_ could happen a hundred years from now. A meteor could come crashing in and wipe us all out. We could get discovered, we could not. Everything could begin again. Who knows? Yes, eternity is a _long_ time. But so is everything else. So are your days and your weeks and your months.”

Heat spikes behind her eyes, though Clarke is resolute in keeping her face down. Abby must sense it, anyway. Because her next words become so much softer, gentler.

“I can’t tell you you’ll be in love forever, sweetheart. But do you think us _mortals_ who marry know we’ll love each other forever too? Because we don’t. It’s a shot in the dark every time. Don’t worry about trying to work out where it lands in the end. You’ll lose your mind. What matters is just finding someone worth enduring the chance with.”

A few tears hit the ring. They slide down the curve of iron, stain the fabric of her jeans beneath. Soon Clarke is wiping them off her face with her palm, almost angry, just willing the stupid fucking thing to stop. She’s been crying way too much these days. It’s embarrassing.

“How do I know, though?” Clarke asks into the silence. At last she looks up to her mother, feeling so lost like she’s a kid all over again.

Abby doesn’t respond immediately, thinks this over. It takes a while before she has an answer. “Do you know where Lexa is right now?”

Clarke rubs the last of the tears off with a frown. “Probably some council business.”

“No. Do you know where she is? Exactly. Right now. Do you know?”

This time, Clarke only stares.

Abby keeps pushing. “If you had to, could you find her? With no guidance, nothing. If you knew absolutely nothing of where she was. Could you find her?”

“I thought that was only with us,” Clarke says slowly.

“Your father was human.”

Oh.

When Clarke stays resolutely silent, Abby just gives her this sad smile. This knowing one. “The choice is yours, Clarke. I can’t make it for you. But, maybe—some part of you has already made it.”

By the time Marcus returns home, Clarke is already gone.

-

They’re back at the beach.

Objectively, this is a terrible idea, but ever since that first time they’d set out here they’ve been coming back. The aim is to come by once a month, always at night and always with the beach dead empty, and while Clarke never gets anywhere in range of the water—she’s happy to relax on the nice _dry_ sand with Lexa.

Sometimes Clarke even shifts and burns off energy by blitzing up and down the shore, sends sand spraying everywhere. Lexa just makes herself at home on the towel and quietly reads her book. Up until Clarke runs out of steam and pads back over to her, tongue hanging out of her mouth and panting like crazy, collapses down in a heap in Lexa’s lap. Half the time Lexa doesn’t even blink from this. Only lifts the book higher in her arms, still reading as she sacrifices one hand to comb between the ears of the werewolf head suddenly conked out over her thigh.

Tonight is a full moon, though. The weeks of rain have cleared up and leaves the moon on complete display, a blinding second sun hovering over the black water, marking a road of white through the ocean beneath. It’s stunning and gorgeous and tugs at something deep, deep inside her. She feels no fear, no loss. Nothing. Only peace.

But the moon wasn’t why she brought Lexa out here.

“It’s beautiful tonight,” Lexa murmurs. They’re sitting next to each other with Clarke leant into her side, her head lying on Lexa’s shoulder. She’s taken Lexa’s hand hostage too, has pulled it all the way into _her_ lap, entwined their fingers and keeps absentmindedly rubbing circles over the knuckles with her thumb. There’s nowhere else in the world she wants to be.

“Sure is,” Clarke murmurs back, smiling. Her nose turns into Lexa’s neck and she presses a soft kiss there. “We’ll make a werewolf out of you yet.”

Lexa doesn’t look at her, but when Clarke glances up, she sees the slow smile that spreads the whole way across her girlfriend’s mouth. The moonlight is holding her entire face up and Clarke doesn’t know what to do with a sight like that. It makes her heart swell and ache beneath her ribs.

If that was the face she had to watch forever, then that’d be pretty alright.

Still. The one downside to having a vampire as a girlfriend, when Clarke loses her smile and her heartrate kicks up in her chest, readying herself for the moment she’s been preparing _days_ for—Lexa ruins the moment before it can start, since she’s pretty much perpetually tuned in to the rhythm of Clarke’s pulse.

“What’s wrong?” Lexa says, turning her face against hers with a frown. Their foreheads rest together and her cold nose nudges against Clarke’s own, so close neither of them bother to open their eyes.

Clarke exhales out a tired sigh. “Stop it, nothing’s wrong. You’re ruining my moment.”

“I am?”

“Lexa. Be quiet. I’m trying to say something.”

“Right. Sorry. I will be quiet.”

A pointed silence follows and Clarke readies herself, trying to temper her breathing and slow down the rabbit-pace of her heart. Of course, her efforts mean little. She’s still scared and her heart won’t stop pounding and the smell of Lexa’s worry climbs higher with each second. At least she’s kind enough not to mention just how tight she’s squeezing Lexa’s hand right now. _This_ is one of the pros to having a vampire girlfriend, see.

“Do I still need to be quiet?” Lexa asks gently after a while.

No. Okay. She can do this. She is fucking _doing this_. Yes. Womaning the fuck up, that’s what she’s doing. Right now. Fuck. Okay. Here she goes.

Step one is actually looking Lexa in the eye, though.

Clarke inhales one last long, steadying breath before pulling away from the sanctuary of Lexa’s shoulder. This seems to confuse Lexa even more, worried eyes tracking every inch of movement. In wordless reassurance, Clarke simply relaxes her death grip on Lexa’s hand and pulls it up to her lips, plants a warm kiss. A tender smile tugs at the edge of Lexa’s mouth and it’s a relief to see some tension leave Lexa’s eyes.

“Did I ever tell you what my dad used to be?”

Lexa’s small smile falters, a knot forming in her brow. “He was human, yes?”

“No, no, I mean his job. What he did for a living.”

“Ah.” Lexa nods, understanding. She takes a moment, thinking back through all Clarke’s mentions of her father. Unsurprisingly, it’s not a whole lot. Talking about him has always felt too close to an open wound even after all these years. When she _does_ speak about him, it’s quiet and brief with her voice like toeing a tightrope. “I think you mentioned he was an engineer, once.”

“My dad was an aerospace engineer,” Clarke confirms, and can’t help but press a quick kiss to Lexa’s lips for remembering. Lexa trails after her, like she always does, but she must notice the serious glint in Clarke’s eyes because she pulls back all on her own.

It’s a rare occasion when Clarke is truly serious.

“And he told me about the Big Bang once. That when it first happened, right, like the start of _everything_ —there was no sound. Because there was nowhere for it to go. No walls to bounce off, let alone anybody around to hear. We’re talking the inception of _creation itself_ and then, just… nothing. Total silence.”

Lexa looks beyond confused about where the hell this is going, though dutifully stays quiet, listening to every word with close attention.

Clarke can feel her heart drum through her entire body.

“I remember it made me angry for some reason. It didn’t make any sense. Like, the most important moment in all of fucking history combined, and there it was. Nothing. _Nothing_. Existence itself just crept silently through the door. The sound came after, only once there was actually a space for it to exist, to grow. We call it a Bang because you’d assume something like an _entire universe_ is going to come out screaming, but…” Clarke lets out a bewildered laugh, shaking her head at it all. “There was nothing. The Bang came late. Isn’t that crazy?”

With trembling hands, Clarke swallows down her racing heart and digs through her pocket. Lexa sees this, and her eyes blow wide, like she’s only now realising what is happening, what Clarke is trying to do. It’s like _every_ muscle in her body goes still. She doesn’t even speak, though her mouth opens like she’s about too only for nothing to come.

But the ring that Clarke pulls out isn’t the one Lexa had given her.

This one isn’t for Clarke.

“Maybe that’s why we don’t realise we’re in too deep until it’s already happened. I don’t know the exact moment I fell in love with you, Lexa. It wasn’t loud. But I felt it after, and I feel it now, and I don’t think I’ll ever really stop.”

“Clarke,” Lexa breathes, tears in her eyes.

“I love you,” Clarke admits softly. “There is nowhere else I want to be than with you. And if that means forever, then… till death do us part, right?”

She shifts her position from the spot on the sand, instead turns so she’s kneeling down on one leg, a simple gold ring held up between her fingers. Unlike Lexa’s, this one wasn’t made by Clarke’s hands. It’s important for an entirely different reason, though—because this was her father’s wedding ring once upon a time.

Just because _werewolves_ don’t wear jewellery doesn’t mean their spouses can’t.

“Marry me,” Clarke says, breathless.

Lexa struggles to speak, too busy gaping at her like this is the last thing she could have expected even if _she_ was the one who proposed first. But the silence goes on for long enough that Lexa must see the fear building in Clarke’s eyes because then, all at once, Lexa is forcibly shaking herself out of her daze and nodding, laughing through the tears trailing down her face.

“Yes, _yes._ ”

“Yeah?” Clarke repeats like an idiot, but she’s grinning so big her cheeks hurt and when Lexa smiles equally wide it’s too much and she bursts forward, yanking her in by the neck into a rough kiss. It’s a mess of a kiss too, both smiling too hard it fails to go anywhere. But Clarke pulls Lexa’s down on top of her, fisting the front of her shirt, and every second is worth it for the giddy elation running through her.

Eventually, the kiss ends with Lexa hovering over her, holding Clarke down by the wrists either side of her head. The position is so distracting that she doesn’t realise that Lexa is threading their fingers together and sacredly easing the gold ring out from Clarke’s hand so she can take it into her own. Only when Lexa sits up in her lap does Clarke realise, when she jolts up after her to stay close. Even an inch feels like miles right now.

“You didn’t let me put it on,” Lexa says through an amused smile. Clarke blinks at her dumbly. All she really wants in this moment is Lexa’s mouth on hers again.

Still, there’s no stopping the sudden wave of her nerves that crash back into her when Clarke, after swallowing thickly, reaches for the gold ring in Lexa’s palm and all while watching Lexa’s eyes the entire time, slides the ring down the correct finger.

By some miracle, it fits.

“Do you still have yours?” Lexa asks, but her voice is shaking and the way she’s staring at her makes it almost impossible to think.

“Always,” Clarke whispers. Since Lexa is still sitting in her lap, she just takes Lexa’s newly ringed hand and guides her down to Clarke’s front pocket. Her fingers slide beneath the fabric and her fiancé—her _fiancé—_ leans forward as she does, so her mouth hovers right above Clarke’s. It’s a test she’s more than happy to fail and closes the minor distance anyway, kissing her deep and warm and slow while Lexa blindly finds the wolf ring, takes the band into her fist.

They only break the kiss long enough so Lexa can do the same as Clarke did for her.

This feels different, though. For a second, Clarke doesn’t really breathe as she watches Lexa push the ring onto her finger with gentle purpose, and she prepares herself for _something_. This is supposed to tie them and irreversibly stretch out her lifeline alongside Lexa’s. This is immortality without the bloodshed.

Which means Clarke is wholly confused when the ring slides on and… nothing happens.

No lights in the sky, no shot of electricity jolting through her body. Anticlimactic to say the least. Did it even work?

Clarke cocks a brow up to her. “… That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Lexa repeats, deadpan. “You become immortal and your response is ‘that’s it?’”

“What? I don’t _feel_ any different—”

Because god hates her, that is the exact moment the fabled _something_ happens.

The wolf ring glows red. A sharp, hot pain twists her in heart and Clarke cuts her own words off with a silent cry, curling over herself with a gasp and clutching uselessly at her chest where the pain stems from. It’s like fire racing through her blood, but just as suddenly; it disappears once it’s pulsed through every vessel in her heart. And then it’s gone, done. Like it’d never even been there.

When Clarke slowly brings her eyes up to Lexa, the same echo of pain pinches her face.

“Okay. So that definitely did something.”

Lexa stares at her before breaking into a breathless laugh and Clarke does too.

“Kiss me,” Clarke demands, and Lexa obliges that in kind.

It’s a good thing the beach is empty. Lexa moves smoothly on top of her with years of familiarity, and all the while Clarke can still feel the call of the full moon settling into her from above. And at first, yeah, Clarke had definitely _not_ planned for the increasingly dirty kissing all in the open with only a towel between them and the cold sand below—but the way this is turning is very familiar to Clarke, and she knows that if she doesn’t convince Lexa to drive them back home so they can do this properly they’re not going to leave.

But then Lexa turns her mouth from hers to kiss across her jawline, making a path down to her neck and _worse_ than that, for that stupid fucking spot underneath her jaw, where Lexa runs her tongue and scrapes her teeth and Clarke’s breathing shudders on its own.

“So how long did you practice that speech for?” Lexa murmurs right into her ear.

“God, you don’t even want to know,” Clarke pants. Lexa just hums like she _does_ want to know and goes back to her neck, slides her hands up Clarke’s shirt from below. “I even, uh, even started dreaming about it. Was naked in one once. Though, to be fair, that one ended pretty well.”

“I love you,” Lexa sighs into her skin, and her endeared smile is audible.

Fuck it. They can suffer the consequences later.

“I love you too,” Clarke whispers too, but in a blink flips them over so _she’s_ the one hovering above her. She kisses everywhere she can, undoes the buttons of Lexa’s shirt in rapid succession, and follows all the places she touches with her lips right after.

It’s a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soulmates confirmed stay winning :)
> 
> also, for those curious, the song lexa played was Foreground by Grizzly Bear. SUCH a lovely song. and as always, i wish you a good one and hope you stay safe and well aye.
> 
> translations:  
> Sonwamplei - winter solstice (sun-death)  
> Wankoma - death-honour


End file.
